Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly unnervingly un-laymon like
Review: Although Richard Laymon stands lonely at the top of my list of favorite writers, I must admit,be it a bit unwillingly,
that this book was in fact not one of the better ones.
The subject was okay but the story could have been so much
better if the book would have been twice as long.
Sorry Richie, but don't worry, your entire repertoire
is still on the shelf for everyone to admire.
(And it's something I'm very proud to own, especially
a signed hardcover-copy of "Bite".)
Best book is still "Endless night" !!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Ehhh...Where are the vampires?
Review: As a veteran reader of Laymon I'll be the first one to tell you that the man has written just as many misses as he has hits. For every classic like "Island" or "The Cellar" there are turkeys like "Endless Night", books so trivial and banal I almost feel like I should wrap them in cardboard. But the genius of Laymon is this: even with the stinkers, he keeps us reading. I will never accuse a Laymon novel, no matter how dumb, of being a slow or boring read. "The Stake" falls somewhere in between. The quality of Laymon's writing is excellent and the setup was good however he never develops his concept to the fullest. What could have been an explosive horror novel somehow falls flat.
Larry Dunbar is a writer of gruesome horror novels. Despite the grotesqueries he writes, Larry is just about the nicest, most well-mannered person you could ever meet. He lives in a quiet suburban home with his teenaged daughter and loving wife. One day on a road trip exploring a ghost town with his wife and two of their friends, Larry stumbles upon a corpse buried under the floor of a hotel. Turns out the corpse is (apparently) a female vampire with a stake in her heart. On a return trip with his friend Pete, Larry lugs the corpse back home and sets off to write a non-fictional account of this supposed vampire. But what if the vampire is not really dormant but ready to come back to life? What happens if you pull the stake? Larry is about to find out...
The central character being a horror writer, there are definite undertones of self-referentiality to this tale. The wife and daughter, the struggles with publishers & editors, the setbacks associated with being a writer of gruesome horror, I mean really Laymon is just writing about himself here. The self-referentiality doesn't bother me that much, at least he's not using his horror writer character as a veil attempt to pepper his novel with his own opinions (a la Bentley Little) but it does become very cheesy after a while. That's too bad because his writing quality is top-notch here; he's not filling pages with dialogue, but letting setting and mood take over. He effectively juggles two separate storylines involving different characters and blends them together in the end quite nicely.
I guess my main quelm with "The Stake" is how mellow of a horror novel it ends up being. There is practically none of the violence and nudity Laymon's become so famous (or infamous) for. Even worse, there's not much action either and the marketing of this book as a vampire novel is slightly off-putting. I mean a real vampire novel would have things to scare the reader such as oh I don't know...vampires? There is only one vampire in this entire novel and she spends the whole time lying motionless in a coffin with a stake in her heart while the rest of the characters run around dealing with all sorts of unrelated things. I had high hopes for "The Stake" especially since I wanted Laymon to redeem himself after disappointing me so much with his other vampire misfire "Bite". Oh well, I guess bloodsuckers were not meant to be the man's specialty.
Rating: 
Summary: The "B-Grade" horror turns classic entertainment
Review: Being one of the industry's most under rated writers, Richard Laymon has not lost heart and has continued to produce great books, and The Stake is a sign of the great talent that is Laymon.
The Stake, has trademark Laymon - a supernatural theme, a psychotic maniac, and a perfect family caught in between all this. This however, surpasses all of Laymon's previous works, filled with scenes carefull created and character which are memorable. The plot is nicely done, and the whole novel fits in perfectly. So Laymon, well done son!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: Great book! Twists and turns all the way through. The only problem was that it wasn't long enough! It would be great if he'd write a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Another facet of Laymon ... and a Good Vampire Story ...
Review: Having read some 10 or more of Richard Laymon's novels over the past 2 or 3 years I found this, in it's own subtle way, to be close to the best. To find a "staked" corpse in a Ghost Town is one thing, but to hide it in your garage and fall in love with it - that takes the cake !! Make the hero a horror writer and it only adds to the intrigue of the story. This one gets a "9" only because I've saved the "10" for "Savage". ps - just about all of Laymon's books can be found in any popular bookstore in Australia so I'm a bit confused about the "hard to find" classification.
Rating:
Summary: MY FAVORITE BOOK EVER
Review: I am a fan of weird authors- Hunter S. Thompson, Bret Easton Ellis( Who is my fav.) etc etc. But I was told that The Stake was a good book. I hate horror novels, ever since I read Stephen King, But I got this, and what I found was that this is one of the best books about Obsession ever. We follow two stories in One.The first is Two Couples stumble upon a Coffin with a body with a Stake through it's chest. Larry, a horror novelist, becomes obsessed and He and Pete, the other guy, plan to write a novel about it. So while Larry is finding out who the "Vampire" Is, he bcomes obsessed with who or What it is. The Second being Larry's Daughter who has the hots for her English teacher, who turns out to be a bad person. This book is beyond brilliant, PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: Talk about a genre-breaker!
Review: I've been reading vampire novels for years, and have even written a few of my own (unpublished). Since cutting my eyeteeth on the greats like Stoker, Rice, and Lumley, to the random paperbacks by unknown authors, I thought I'd learned all their tricks. Richard Laymon proved me wrong. This is not a vampire novel. This is a novel about being human in a dangerous, confusing, and above all unpredictable world. And that's exactly what makes it believable. The characters are real: full-fleshed and multi-faceted, with all the quirkiness of normal human beings. And whatever Laymon throws at them, they rise to the occasion admirably, with equal helpings of heroics and cowardice. The horrors they face are not just pulp-comic monsters, but far worse, because you can turn on the TV news and watch them happening every day. And yet there's still the underlying threat of the vampire...or is there? There's so much more I'd like to write, but I wouldn't dream of spoiling the story. If you're a fan of vampire books, or the horror genre in general, this is a must-read, and you won't be disappointed. If you've never picked one up before, make this your first. You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome vampire book
Review: If you are looking for a great vampire book or a great book in general try "the Stake." It's not the traditional vampire story, not what one might expect from typical horror novels. Laymon takes a fresh approach to an old monster, very cool.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad...
Review: OK, this book had good points and bad ones. Good Points: * It was long and a good read * Very intreging * Good use of characters Bad points * It took too long to pull out the stake. It would have been better if they had decided to pull it out to start with. The vampire could come alive and kill all but Larry. Then he had to try and kill her again. Instead it tool the whole book to pull the thing out, but that wasn't of purpose...
Rating:
Summary: interesting twist on a vampire story
Review: Richard Laymon has always been a guilty pleasure
for me; and I've read and enjoyed his paperbacks for years. So, naturally, when I saw a hardcover on the New Releases shelf at the local library I did a double take at the name "Laymon". Stake has all the typical Laymon elements of horror and underlaying sexuality, but Laymon makes this story more accessible to those more refined readers that wouldn't touch a pulp horror book. The Stake is a interesting twist on the vampires that contrasts the horrors we create as humans with the mythical horrors of the supernatural. I had hoped that the
Stake would gain Laymon more mainstream acceptance, but, alas, Laymon seems to have all but disappeared afterwards, (I don't think he is
published in the US any longer :-().
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