Richard Laymon is an easy horror writer to love, but he’s prone to the affliction which strikes fright authors on occasion: Kingitis – that brain fever that makes them think that they may be able to win literary awards if they add something snazzy to the conventions of their chosen genre and – following in the bloody boot tracks of Stephen King – that something tends to be a coming-of-age story.

And finally we come to Laymon’s SAVAGE, at last brought into print in America. It’s been described as “Laymon’s Jack the Ripper book,” which it is and it isn’t. I think it’s only tangentially a Ripper novel, as it draws on Ripper lore only to get the plot moving. Laymon is not interested in exploring the legend or the history of The Whitechapel Butcher; it’s just a string with which to hang a novel of adventure in the American West of the late 19th century.

Any brutal serial killer would have done just as well, but an imaginary one couldn’t attract the number of readers that Jack the Ripper can. It’s a purely commercial decision on Laymon’s part. I don’t hold it against him, but you should know that this one isn’t really an addition to Ripper fiction.

The protagonist is a 15-year-old boy named Trevor Bentley, stuck in the late Victorian home of an abusive, dominant male. Laymon never met a coincidence he didn’t like and several of them land Trevor at the scene of a Ripper murder as it is being committed.

The boy escapes his situation and – coincidence again – finds himself on a ship sailing for America along with an American family, all prisoners of You Know Who. It seems like a propitious time to leave ol’ Blighty behind, so Jack decides to go west to see if he can find others like himself. Yes, the book contains not a few hints of Nicholas Meyer’s TIME AFTER TIME, but bringing the Ripper to Gilded Age America may make that necessary.

Trevor escapes by jumping overboard, leaving the dead family behind. The Ripper’s bloodlust rages so strongly he can’t control himself during the journey. But once in America, he practically vanishes from the narrative, which becomes an odd blend of HUCKLEBERRY FINN and HEART OF DARKNESS, with touches of Robert Louis Stevenson’s THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, which you should read if you haven’t already.

Children should be used sparingly in horror tales. Threatening them is just too easy a way to generate fear and loathing, and while making them the (potential) villains can be excruciatingly effective, a la THE TURN OF THE SCREW, it also can be absolutely risible, a la “Children of the Corn.” If chilling your audience with adult characters is too difficult, maybe you’re writing in the wrong genre.

In some ways, SAVAGE makes me think of those “adult” Westerns which contain a number of sex scenes, some bordering the pornographic. The authors want the books to be traditional Westerns but have tossed in the nasty to provide what the reader of adult Westerns expects. Laymon wants to write a mainstream novel, maybe something along the lines of THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS, but has to stick in the graphic violence for which he is famous or his readers will be disappointed. If he doesn’t provide bloody murder, his fans will scream it.

So this turns out to be too horrific for readers of mainstream coming-of-age stories, and too weak-willy for horror heads. Call it an experiment that doesn’t quite come off. Laymon may want to be King or Ray Bradbury, but he doesn’t have the chops for it.

For this author’s best work, turn to the psychological thrillers of his middle years. That stuff will get under your skin and stay there long after the surface shocks of most slash-and-burn horror writers have faded away. –Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AFTER MIDNIGHT by Richard Laymon
• THE BEAST HOUSE by Richard Laymon
• THE CELLAR by Richard Laymon
• COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon
• ISLAND by Richard Laymon
• THE LAKE by Richard Laymon