By RAY GARTON (Mark V. Zeising Books; 1991)
A shorter-than-average (188 page) horror novel by the late Ray Garton that is, frankly, a bit wonky. That’s evident immediately, in the unwieldy opening sentence—“When Bill Ketter walked out of the restaurant at the Petromo Truck Stop in Springfield, Missouri, after a meal of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob and a slice of lemon meringue, he was just tired enough for his limp to show as he crossed the back lot to his truck”—and the extended prologue, which could pass as a self-contained short story.
That prologue relates the travails of the abovementioned Mr. Ketter, a lonely truck driver whose wife has left him and took their two children with her. He’s accosted by a lot lizard (a truck stop dwelling prostitute) who turns out to be a vampire. She promptly makes off with Bill’s wallet, and his humanity, while at around the same time on an Arizona interstate Larry, a Highway Patrolman, meets a very strange trucker whose presence makes Larry realize that “Something wasn’t right here, something was…missing….”
From there the narrative jumps forward a year to the Northern California town Yreka (derived, evidently, from the actual No Cal community Eureka, in which Garton set many of his novels), where family man Doug is on the road with his spouse Adelle and stepchildren Dara, Jon and Cece—who, it’s quickly revealed, are the estranged wife and children of Bill, our friend from the prologue. A car crash forces Doug’s car off the road and into the Sierra Gold Pan Truck Stop, which is stocked with a variety of colorful characters. Also afoot at the truck stop is Bill, who’s in search of the lot lizard who vampirized him and her non-vampiric handlers (one of which appeared in the prologue)—who it turns out entered the truck stop right after Doug and co. The stage is set for an epic confrontation, not only with Bill, his family and his tormentors, but also the queen vampire controlling the bloodsuckers, who likewise happens to be at the truck stop on this particular night.
LOT LIZARDS often reads like a dry run for FROM DUSK TILL DAWN and BORDELLO OF BLOOD, being a highly contained vampire blow-out with an emphasis on sex and gore and a tough, unsparing viewpoint (an Anne Rice novel this isn’t). It has structural issues, as enumerated above, and suffers from chaotic viewpoint shifts and attempts at cinematic intercutting, with the actions of various different characters grouped together and ellipses used to separate them, that don’t quite come off.
Otherwise, however, LOT LIZARDS stands as a decent Garton concoction, with a fast-moving action-oriented narrative and much lovingly detailed gore (albeit not quite as inventive as the bloodletting found in Garton splat fests like SEDUCTIONS and LIVE GIRLS). The characterizations are strong, showcasing Garton’s eye for language, behavior and naturalistic detail. The back cover author bio claims Garton visited several truck stops as research for the establishments he describes in these pages, which do indeed feel authentic. Not that I’d know.