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Night Killers
A flesh-ripping horror creeping from the darkness
- GenresHorror
208 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1983
59 people want to read
About the author
Richard Lewis
205 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 24, 2021
Richard Lewis never fails. Highly recommended.
April 7, 2021
Nightmare fuel and I don't even have an overactive aversion to cockroaches. Lewis weaves a tapestry of tragic character vignettes mostly ending with crushingly bleak and dark death scenes. A markedly rushed ending, which isn't bad in the slightest. Lewis, if any, would be the author to end such harrowing horror, nihilistic as all get out, with a gag—a punchline of savage indignity.
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October 1, 2025For 300 million years they have existed unchanged - furtive insects scuttling through the shadows. Till modern man began to destroy his environment. They came the fatal night when a vicious murderer died before he could burn his latest victim. Ravenous cockroaches devour the corpse, and develop a new craving - for human flesh. Mutating into savagely efficient killers, they prey on the young, the old, the drunk, the injured. Undetected. Unstoppable.
Eventually two scientists guess the truth, but no one will believe them - until a chilling disaster strikes!
Richard Lewis wrote several late 70s/early 80s horror paperbacks (I read his “The Spiders” a few years back and enjoyed it) and this was one of those that had become difficult and expensive to get hold of. So when I found it, for £1 on a charity bookshelf in Tesco, I snapped it up and started reading it straight away.
David Forrest is a journalist (but a nice one!), who also a biologist (don’t question it) and his new girlfriend, Sally Thomson, is a social worker. When some of her charges go missing, only to turn up savagely mutilated, David teams up with his friend Grant, an entomologist (the two men spend evenings together, planning a book on insects (again, don’t question it) to figure out what’s going on. Well, the blurb tells us and Lewis delivers the gore in spades but, in doing so, he also throws the pace of the book completely. Instead of showing us random attacks (and one, on a young boy, is a tough read), he spends a couple of chapters introducing us to the characters who are going to get munched and, since we know they’re going to die, it feels like wading through unnecessary waffle. That aside, the book works perfectly well for what it is, a snapshot of London in the early 80s, with briskly written characters who crack on and get things done, fighting against the authorities to make themselves believed. Well plotted, this is only let down by those pacing issues I mentioned and a violent sexual assault that feels very out of place. If, like me, you love this kind of novel then you’re going to have a good time reading it but if it’s not your cup of tea going on, it won’t change your mind. I’d recommend it.
Eventually two scientists guess the truth, but no one will believe them - until a chilling disaster strikes!
Richard Lewis wrote several late 70s/early 80s horror paperbacks (I read his “The Spiders” a few years back and enjoyed it) and this was one of those that had become difficult and expensive to get hold of. So when I found it, for £1 on a charity bookshelf in Tesco, I snapped it up and started reading it straight away.
David Forrest is a journalist (but a nice one!), who also a biologist (don’t question it) and his new girlfriend, Sally Thomson, is a social worker. When some of her charges go missing, only to turn up savagely mutilated, David teams up with his friend Grant, an entomologist (the two men spend evenings together, planning a book on insects (again, don’t question it) to figure out what’s going on. Well, the blurb tells us and Lewis delivers the gore in spades but, in doing so, he also throws the pace of the book completely. Instead of showing us random attacks (and one, on a young boy, is a tough read), he spends a couple of chapters introducing us to the characters who are going to get munched and, since we know they’re going to die, it feels like wading through unnecessary waffle. That aside, the book works perfectly well for what it is, a snapshot of London in the early 80s, with briskly written characters who crack on and get things done, fighting against the authorities to make themselves believed. Well plotted, this is only let down by those pacing issues I mentioned and a violent sexual assault that feels very out of place. If, like me, you love this kind of novel then you’re going to have a good time reading it but if it’s not your cup of tea going on, it won’t change your mind. I’d recommend it.
January 4, 2023
Another creepy-crawlies horror - this one, I feel, was pretty gruesome in places and certain made me itch a few times (not to mention checking the bed for any bugs!) Richard Lewis is fantastic at creating creepy skin crawling moments, with a fast past gripping plot (think cheesy creature feature).
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews