The Wyrm (Paperback)

Michael Lambton is a jittery, retiring young horror writer, in the rustic little sideroad English town of Shillingham. He's taking something of a break from his work, to exorcize personal demons. His neighbor, solitary barmaid Christy Warwick, has a few demons of her own to exorcize - her father's the town loony, possessive, overprotective, obsessive and not a little bizarre. The two meet and hit it off fairly quickly, and would probably have a textbook boring romance if it weren't for recent goings-on. Seems the Shillingham town council is ready to tear down that four-hundred-year-old gallows that is the only local tourist attraction, and modernize a bit. Christy's dad is downright homicidally opposed to the idea, for some reason. He's arrested for chasing off the bulldozers and diggers with a shotgun, but that's the least of Michael, Christy and Shillingham's problems - the gallows was the only thing keeping a bad man down, and now that it's removed, all hell's starting to break loose.

This book is nothing you haven't read before, and you've probably read it better. Laws is a talented writer - his more recent Darkfall is especially good - but The Wyrm is one of his earlier efforts, written seventeen years ago, and it shows. It's a tad derivative of Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, and a little juvenilistically over-the-top. The writing is undisciplined, the plot telegraphed and the finale fairly predictable.

However, the seeds of Laws' more mature style of later years are in evidence. The first third of the book is especially good in atmosphere and development of genuinely likeable characters. After that highly promising beginning, it all starts to fall apart and become a less than believable supernatural melodrama, the preceding careful weaving of plot giving way to special-effect variety non-stop action. There's a semi-clever twist to the ending, which you're likely to skim quickly to if you've read books of this type before (and plainly you will have, if this is your cup of tea).

Open to the middle of the book and read a couple of pages first, before buying. If you like what you see there, you'll like the rest of it. If it all seems terribly over-familiar, you'll want to look elsewhere. Even if The Wyrm isn't what you want, though, something else by Laws probably will be. He's definitely an author worth watching.