By R. Karl Largent
1993 Leisure
Paperback, 365 pages
I
normally do not like books written in first person narrative. Especially in
horror books. I mean, you know right away that the storyteller survives. And if
that main character is a bit of a smarmy, self-important twat, then it makes it
even harder to dig in. I got over it and let the story evolve but I never
really liked Elliot Wages.
Mr.
Wages is an author spending the summer in a small vacation town where he
somehow becomes the most popular resident. He dates the town’s most beautiful woman,
and he has the respect of most of the population. Despite a less than
average summer season, the town of Jericho is bracing for the upcoming Jubilee,
when tourists will flock to the town’s lake for fun and frivolity. BUT (yes,
there is always a big but), there have been a couple of missing or mutilated
kids, an oversized, mutant gar, a mysterious fog, and a permeating odor… should
the Jubilee actually take place? Holy Jaws, Batman!
OK,
despite the wonderful cover, The Lake is not a Creature Feature story.
Yes, there are a few outsized, aggressive gar, but the real danger is that fog.
It seems that a factory on the lake is releasing some deadly shit into the
water and it’s mixing with some other shit and making a flesh melting fog. OK,
I’m still interested.
At 365
pages, this book is far thicker than I usually like to delve in to and
somewhere around the half-way mark, it became quite a slog. But I soldiered on
and by the last quarter of the book, I’ll be goddamned… it got pretty damn
exciting. After learning that it wasn’t going to be about bloodthirsty gar, I
was a bit disappointed, but it really turned out to be a pretty good thriller.
Not a horror novel by any stretch, but a tight, suspenseful nail-biter. Largent
has a number of actual horror novels under his belt, so I’m looking forward to
checking some of them out.
As long
as they’re not written in first person…
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