Rating: 
Summary: Buckets of blood Laymon style
Review: Richard Laymon novels are often a hit or miss affair. For every classic like "Island", there's a dud like "Endless Night", and out of the 20 or so novels of his I've read I must admit that close to half were nothing to go nuts over. But I have still found it worthwhile to slug over mediocre works of his because the payoff is that when you find a Laymon book that's good it's REAL good. "One Rainy Night" is certainly one of his best, and it typifies the things that Laymon does best: Fast-Paced action, buckets of gore, graphic body violence and evil-to-the-core villains.
The setting takes place in the small California town of Bixby, where the peacefulness of the town is shattered overnight by a thick black rain that pours down and inexplicably turns its citizens into homicidal maniacs. Citizens lucky enough to be indoors when the rain starts to pour are now faced with a more trying dilemma: stem the tide of ghouls trying to break in.
A very simplistic plot it certainly is and Laymon keeps it straightforward throughout. "One Rainy Night" has all the qualities of great b-movie horror, such as graphic gore, horny teenagers, a town sheriff, a small hicktown setting. Comparisons to "Night of the Living Dead" are certainly just as the novel has many scenes of people barricading themselves inside in an attempt to ward off the creatures lurking outside. He even attempts to lend credence to an otherwise unbelievable central concept (killer rain) by tying in the story with a voodoo-practicing elder man who put a spell on the town to avenge the death of his grandson.
The entire events of the novel take place over one night, making it an engaging read with a fast pace. Laymon's writing is very sharp, free of the often pointless dialogue that plagues some of his other works and he does an excellent job of instilling dread at the thought of the pouring rain. He intertwines several different scenarios together with seamless ease, as characters who never crossed paths throughout the novel bond together towards the end to fight the rain-soaked maniacs. Like many other Laymon novels, this will satisfy those horror fans looking for the literary equivalent of a fun horror b-movie.
Rating:
Summary: what a ride
Review: I wasn't really enthused about this book after reading the first chapter. I actually put it down for a couple of days which is unusual for me. But boy oh boy when I picked it up again, it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. A black rain is turning ordinary people into homicidal cannibalistic maniacs (think Living Dead). Only those who get wet are affected so the folks who were inside when the rain started have to do whatever it takes to survive the night. And the ending is a real original. Don't miss out on the thrills of this one!
Rating: 
Summary: The night the rain fell
Review: The rain was black, pleasantly warm and it fell heavily in the small, unremarkable town of Bixby. After the death of Maxwell Chidi, in a possible racial attack, it began to fall with the coming of the night and it did very "strange" things to all those caught in the rain.This book is classic Laymon and it tears along at a rip-roaring pace with little time to catch your breath between what have almost become his violent "set pieces". The premise is slightly odd but what else have we come to expect from what must be one of the modern masters of horror writing. One Rainy Night will grab you from the first paragraph and you will feel slightly cheated when it comes to an end; not because of the ending itself but because it has ended.
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