Beware!

Lacey is a reporter for the local paper in her small home town of Oasis, Arizona. A series of events sees her sexually assaulted and held hostage by an invisible assailant who seems to be someone from her past. Lacey makes an ingenious escape and skips town to hide out in a resort hotel.

There she meets Scott, an author of pulp detective stories. He susses out that’s she’s in hiding and agrees to help her, even if he doesn’t believe her story about an invisible man.

A few pages later, Lacey and Scott are running for their lives through the hotel’s corridors. Her invisible attacker has found her, but not before Scott had time to call in reinforcements. Matt Dukane, an elite mercenary and the source of Scott’s lurid tales, arrives via his private plane.

Dukane meets up with Lacey and Scott, and the three soon realize they’re under attack from a mysterious cult. One that’s already infiltrated all levels of society and will stop at nothing until they’re all dead.

Beware is a nice return to the supernatural for Laymon. As is typical, he throws us into Lacey’s situation and floors the accelerator. We never get the full picture of the cult, just enough information to give us an idea of the stakes at play. The characters are thin but entertaining. You root for the good guys and loath the bad guys.

The sexual assaults on Lacey can make for some tough reading, but they’re not gratuitous. Laymon uses the attacks to define Lacey, not as a victim, but as a strong-willed, quick-witted survivor. For as much as his novels get labeled as misogynistic, it’s astounding how so many miss this point.

Like everything from Laymon thus far, this is pure pulp. An easy, fast read that keeps you hoping the characters survive every turn of the page.