#30 -- Blood Games by Richard Laymon

From the Publisher
A group of four former college friends hold a reunion at an abandoned summer camp, only to find they're sharing the camp with a maniac.

Publishers Weekly
Like so much of his mid-career work, it's a middling effort, and it's also a mixed bag-nearly literally, as it offers a present-day scenario interspersed with flashbacks that are, in effect, standalone short stories. In the present, five young alumni of Belmore University are on their annual get-together; this year, the choice of what to do has fallen to Helen, a horror buff, who arranges for the group to camp out at a deserted backwoods lodge where guests were slaughtered by locals several years back. In time, the group encounter various townsfolk, including a witch, whom they must fight for their lives, resulting in a characteristic Laymon bloodbath. The action here is fast but predictable. Of greater interest are the flashbacks, showing first how the gang got together, then detailing their various exploits-taking revenge on some frat guys by setting fire to their house, on a cruel dean by trashing her office, on a nasty homeowner on Halloween by destroying his living room; seducing a young male surfer during a foggy nighttime trip along the California coast, etc. It's in these scenes that Laymon displays some, but not much, of the surreal nightmarish sensibility that hallmarked his great later work (The Traveling Vampire Show, etc.). Overall, then, this is brisk but routine entertainment from the controversial author, who died in 2001.

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Great book. This is the third Laymon book that I have read and probably my favorite so far. Not a lot of blood and gore as some of his books are prone to, but a good solid story that makes you want to keep reading. The book jumps back and forth between present day and the past when the five friends were in college. It tells the story of how the girls met and became friends. They were always 'adventuresome' and made a pact when they graduated that they would meet for a week once a year to go on an adventure together. Only this adventure is more than they planned. Excellent read!!