Live Girls

Davey Owens is an editorial assistant at somewhat sleezy Penn Publications. He's a bit of a flake, a bit of a loser. His girlfriend has left him, his boss wants to sleep with him and passes him over for promotion because he passes on her. He's depressed and in a way he's every man who slogs away at the grindstone, reaching for that brass ring that is forever out of reach. But unlike every man, but like a lot of men, Davey seeks solace in sex for hire. Not a prostitute or a call girl, but in one of those establishments you find in a city's seamier side, but in this case the city is New York and everybody knows they do everything better in the Big Apple. Here a peep show is oh so much more and Davey gets oh so much more than he bargains for when he goes inside and meets Anya, a peeper's dream. Anya is a vampire, but when she bites him, it's not on the back of the neck. This is an erotic novel, so I'll leave where Davey finds the bite marks to your imagination. Needless to say, Davey becomes addicted to Anya and what he finds in the place with "Live Girls" written on the marquee outside. He has to keep coming back for more and after each visit he grows just a bit more pale. Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Walter Benedek is busy tracking down his brother-in-law, a guy who murdered his wife and daughter, Walter's sister and niece, in the most grizzly fashion imaginable. His investigation leads him to "Live Girls," where he runs into the pale looking Davey. Davey tells Walter everything he knows about the place and together they try and find out just what is going on in the back alleys of the city that never sleeps. There you have the set up for this story that was finally rereleased by Leisure. Erotic horror seems so overdone today, but imagine this book in the context of when it was written, almost three decades ago, and you'll see what a ground breaker it was. Of course there were others back then stuffing grizzly horror novels full of sex, both violent and erotic. Richard Laymon comes to mind. In fact if you like Laymon's stuff, you'll love LIVE GIRLS. If you love a good fright you'll love LIVE GIRLS. In fact I can't imagine anyone not loving this story of vampires, but if the bloodsuckers aren't enough for you, you can get your laughs here too. Who would have know that you could be scared silly one second and belly laughing the next.

When people mention erotic horror, which is a phrase thrown about continuously nowadays, I immediately think of Ray Garton's "Live Girls". There may have been other books that came before this one to pioneer the new sub-genre of horror but Live Girls was the first I was exposed to. In this regards, I find myself unbelievably lucky. I discovered the Ray Garton classic in a used book store in the early 90's. The simple cover design caught my eye and the back of book synopsis kept the book in my hand. I was hesitant only because this was the height of the horror "boom" where publishers were flooding the market with Stephen King wannabes that utilized the same six themes over and over with horrible results. There were a few gems published during this time frame but most of it was just coal. I was worried the same thing was going to happen with "Live Girls". After all, it was about Vampires; how original could it be? Lets just say I was damn glad I didn't put the book back on the shelf. I finished the book in a weekend. Mr. Garton pulled me in like a fish on a line. I was introduced to flesh and blood characters that could have been me or someone I knew. The vampires were original and not a carbon copy of every other vampire tale coming out at the time. The dialogue seemed natural and I wasn't overwhelmed with endless pages of description. Mr. Garton writes with a tight and direct style. He says what needs to be said and doesn't waste words. Finally, when it came to the erotic aspect of the horror, Mr. Garton delivered. Up until this point, I felt men in the horror field could not write about sex or anything sexual. The best sex scenes I ever read were always written by a woman. This book proved me wrong. Unfortunately, I loaned my copy of "Live Girls" to a casual friend and never got it back. The book went on to have a cult like status with fans and it became impossible to lay hands on a copy (I wound up buying a copy of the Cemetery Dance edition). Now fans of Ray Garton (as well as other small press horror authors) have Leisure books to thank. The publisher is making many hard to find classics, as well as new works, available to wider audiences. Take advantage and pick it up before it disappears for another decade. You will not be disappointed.

Ray Garton's Live Girls is everything a good horror novel should be: hip, edgy, fast-paced, and entertaining. But it goes one step further. It's everything a good vampire novel should be, leaving behind the Victorian trappings of Bram Stoker's Dracula and moving swiftly into twentieth-century Times Square. Thankfully there are no whining Anne Rice types brooding about the futility of life while sipping absinthe and applying black nail polish. This novel takes a fresh, original look at undead bloodsuckers and is more From Dusk Til Dawn than Interview with a Vampire. In my book, that's a very good thing. Vampires in literature have always had an inherent connection to sex. The taking of blood by vampire bite is often used as a metaphor for intercourse. Garton turns this metaphor on its head by setting his novel inside a New York City peepshow run by vampires. Not only do the vamps in Live Girls make their living off of the sex trade, but they also sustain themselves through an unusual variation of sex. I'm not going to spoil that part of the book and reveal just how the vamps feed inside Live Girls. Let's just say this is one of the most inventive and desirable ways to become a vampire if you had to get bitten. One of the things I like best about this book is the skillful characterization and the author's willingness to place his characters in extreme peril. Everyone in Live Girls is flawed to some extent and must overcome their own personal weaknesses in order to survive. Garton doesn't let his characters off easy and forces them into difficulty at nearly every turn. No one is safe in this book, and more times than not, things get worse even when you think it can't. The story centers around Davey Owen, a Penn Publishing employee and victim of his own uncanny ability to always choose the wrong girlfriends. After breaking up with his most recent girlfriend, Beth, and venturing into Live Girls out of curiosity and a need to push Beth out of his mind, Davey becomes enchanted by a particular dancer named Anya. More importantly, he becomes entranced by the things she does to him inside of Live Girls. It is only when he finds himself returning time and time again, almost against his will, that Davey realizes something is amiss. Never one to deal privately with the consequences of his own mistakes, Davey eventually manages to pull friends, coworkers, and acquaintances into this new dark world, and carnage ensues. Live Girls has enough grue for the extremist, enough suspense for the action junkie, enough blood and fangs for the vamp enthusiasts, and enough new ideas for even the most hardened, skeptical horror fan who swears that the vampire genre has been done to death. Live Girls is a book I "hole-heartedly" recommend (you'll see what I mean by that when you hit page 35). Although I'm not necessarily a vampire fan, I am most definitely a Ray Garton fan and look forward to seeing what he writes next. Highly recommended.

Walter Benedek knew that his sister Doris and her husband Vernon didn't have a picturesque relationship. However, when he finds Doris and her daughter slaughtered in their apartment, and his brother-in-law Vernon is the main suspect, several questions are raised. After doing some snooping, he finds an odd link to lie at the heart of a suspicious-looking establishment known only as Live Girls. When Davey Owen's life begins to take a drastic turn (losing his live-in girlfriend and his job in one day), he seeks solace in something new. He ventures into a dark, obscure establishment called simply Live Girls. After his first encounter within a peep show booth, Davey's curiosity becomes obsession. However, Davey may have bitten off more than he can chew. Anya, the gorgeous dancer at the heart of Davey's obsessions, has given him the chance to lead a whole new life. The lives of Walter Benedek and Davey Owen will intertwine as the race to quell the ravenous beings whose home lies in the heart of a large city begins. New York has an unbeknownst and multi-layered vampiric underbelly that Davey and Walter only begin to unravel. Garton has an entrancing way with words that manages to be poignant, gripping, moving, and direct all at the same time. Not a single word is wasted within his pages. Live Girls is at times gritty, gory, and beautiful, as well as everything in between. Garton's vampires lie somewhere between Rice's romantic visionaries and Meikle or Kilpatrick's vicious predators, tending to more closely resemble a modern day, explicit and unreserved Dracula. It's a slightly newer spin on the genre, without being so off-beat that it's difficult to sink your teeth into. Live Girls will grab you by the neck and pull you into it's voracious clutches, not letting go until you've devoured the novel in it's entirety. Once the pace gets going, it never lets up, rapidly spiraling into the intense finale. I highly anticipate the opportunity to read the sequel to this novel, Night Life, and I highly recommend this and anything else by Garton. No horror library is complete without Live Girls.

Back in 1987, before vampire fiction became it's own genre of a sort, Ray Garton gave us one of the most terrifying, erotic horror vampire novels ever published... A frustrated and depressed journalist finds himself drawn to a run down peep show in NYC's Time Square. It's out of character for him, but he is lonely and confused, having lost his fiance to another man. What he finds in the darkness of the club called "Live Girls" however, is like a terrifying wetdream. The woman who dances for him is hypnotically beautiful and alluring but what she demands of him will change his life forever. The woman is part of a cabal of vampires, working in the sex trade, and the secrets they hide inside "Live Girls", and in the basement of the club, are the stuff of nightmares... Garton was at the top of his game with this novel and horror fans still talk about it today, more than a decade later. It's one of my all time favorites and I still pick it up about once a year and reread it. The "things" in the basement of the club still gives me chills. If you're a horror or vampire fan, your book collection has a huge gaping hole in it if you don't own a copy of this book. Highest recommendation.