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The Beast House By Richard Laymon Visit the offical Richard Laymon website: Richard Laymon Kills! The Beast House is the second book in Richard Laymon's Beast House series. The book is 369 pages long and although it would be possible to read it as a stand-alone novel, reading The Cellar first will give you a better understanding of the story. I must warn you though that neither book is suitable for the faint-hearted. So if sex and horror offends, you might want to avoid a tour of the Beast House.   The first killing spree at the Beast House happened in 1903 when Lillian Thorn owned it, but that was just the start. The present owner Maggie Kutch lost her family to the Beast back in 1931 and, realizing the money-spinning potential of the place, she turned it into a museum and has been conducting guided tours of the house ever since.   In the previous book the central characters were Donna Hayes and her young daughter Sandy. Donna's child molesting husband, Roy, had been released from prison and so she and Sandy had fled up the coast to Malcasa Point, home of the Beast House. They didn't flee far enough, though, and Roy found them. The Beast found them all.   Donna and Sandy also feature in The Beast House, but their roles in the story, though important, are diminished. The Beast House picks up the story about a year later. After Donna and Sandy 'disappeared' from their room at The Welcome Inn, the proprietor's daughter, Janice Crogan, found Lillian Thorn's diary in their room and The Beast House begins with a series of letters between Janice and a famous author named Gorman Hardy. Janice feels that a book about the Beast House could make a lot of money and, because she is the one with the diary, she wants a fifty percent split of all profits.   Janice is an important character in the book, as is Hardy, but the main characters this time around are four other visitors to The Welcome Inn: Tyler Moran and her friend Nora Branson and two ex-marines called Abe Clanton and Jack Wyatt. Tyler has come to Malcasa point hoping to find her lost love, Dan. Before the girls even manage to get as far as the inn though, they run into trouble and when Abe and Jack come rushing to their rescue love is in the air and it looks like old love Dan is destined to loose his place in Tyler's heart to the new guy Abe Clanton.   A lot of this book concerns the blossoming relationship between Tyler and Abe. Jack and naughty Nora are too busy with their own holiday fling to feel like gooseberries, but their romance stays in the background and neither one of them is ever a viewpoint character.   Most of the main characters in Beast House are easy to like. Gorman Hardy, however, is easy to hate. He is a nasty man and I did not have to get too far into the book before I began hoping that he would become beast fodder.   There is a lot happening in this book: Tyler's search for Dan and her budding romance with Abe; Gorman Hardy's selfish search for further fame and wealth, Donna's strained relationship with her daughter, and the reader even finds out about the origins of the original Beast, courtesy of a strange old dude name Captain Frank. All in all it is quite a story and if, like me, you like the book, you can find out what happens next by reading the next book in the series The Midnight Tour.     List of Richard Laymon books reviewed on this site   HOME