Midnight's Lair is a 1988 horror novel by Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon

Richard Carl Laymon was an American author of suspense and horror fiction, particularly within the splatterpunk subgenre. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived as a child in California...

, originally written under the pseudonym Richard Kelly. It was first published in Great Britain and was not released in the United States until 1993, where it was distributed by St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press

St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...

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Plot

The novel concerns a group of tourists who become trapped in an underground cavern after a fire destroys the exits. Darcy, one of the tour guides, takes a small group to try and escape by breaking into a portion of the cave that had been walled up years before. But when they attempt to breach the wall they accidentally release a family of cannibalistic savages that has been secretly living in the cave for over half a century.