After Midnight / by Richard Laymon

Perhaps not so well-known in the mainstream owing to his severity of subject matter, Richard Laymon's still managed quite a cult following among readers of the thriller genre. After Midnight follows a young woman's attempt to conceal her involvement in a murder after a run-in with a night prowler.


Her housemates away on vacation, Alice is left alone in the big house at the edge of the woods. But it's cool. She'll be fine if she just remembers to lock everything, set the alarm, and not get spooked by shadows, right? No dice. Terror soon materializes when a trespasser opts for a midnight swim in the pool...nude. Subsequently discovering her in the house alone, the intruder's attempted break-in coincides with a phone call--a wrong number of all things--causing Alice to lose sight of the would-be predator. Near hysteria and unwilling to summon the police (issues), Alice reluctantly accepts 'aid' from the calm-sounding stranger on the phone, who says he's 'just around the corner'. When ensuing events leave one man dead and another out to get her, Alice's only escape is a path more dangerous than she's ever encountered.

Emphasizing every connotation of the term, this book is downright creepy. Readers seeking a compendium to V.C. Andrews or Dean Koontz should readjust their appetites for Laymon, so graphic is the content. Yet it's Alice's manner as she 'puts things right' through a series of grisly undertakings which most invites or dissuades any sympathy. Far from a one-dimensional character, revelations about Alice never--never--fail to alarm as the story progresses.

While After Midnight isn't quite 'pulp', it still borrows heavily from the noir genre, inherent in its heightened suspense and amplified realism. And yet if things weren't so gruesome, it could almost be comedy. People die off or get mutilated but it's not as if there's a war on. The story's atmosphere is more run-of-the-mill, everyday ennui than murderous mayhem, a sentiment fueled by Alice's mood and demeanor more than the action itself.