Out are the Lights, by Richard Laymon...Review by Kyle Lybeck

In a dusty local movie theater, everyone gathers to watch the latest double feature. In-between them is a featured short film that shocks and sends fear into the sets of eyes that witness the carnage. Who could have been so sick to come up with an idea that depraved? How in the world did they manage those special effects?

As they keep coming back for the next installment of the short film series at the double feature intermissions, they begin to wonder: can this actually be real? It's more and more lifelike each time, leaving the viewer in a mental quandary of fiction versus reality. Who will take the jump to find out the truth?

I love Richard Laymon's books. Ever since the old Leisure days when I first discovered him, by going to Borders once a week with my meager leftover earnings that weren't going to rent and food, to buy a new stack of books from him and others, I've been hooked. How then, did I somehow never finish out all of the books in my collection of his? No idea, but there are five or six I just never got around to, this being one of them. A very quick read (I put it away in less than a day), it is true to form of what you'd expect from Laymon. Fun, gory, at times a little dorky, but a read I can see myself paging through again in the future, just like his other books I've read.

Overall I'd give this one a B+, and a rump for good measure.

Review by Kyle Lybeck