Let's talk about lake monsters. There are really only two kinds: one is a slimy, mutated, flesh-eating, ravenous disgusto-beast from the coldest depths of the deepest lake. The other develops real estate in Miami.
Let’s consider the first kind.
The Lake is written by R. Karl Largent (aka Robin Lawrence) who delivered a bunch of military adventure books and horror novels in the late 80's and early 90's. This one, from 1993, is actually competently written, but incredibly boring (unlike Saurian, which cleverly reverses that formula). A writer living in the tiny lakeside community of Jericho discovers that the secretive Bartel Toy Company is spewing toxic waste into the lake and it's resulted in folks catching six-foot garfish that are all gnarly, with their skin swollen and rotting off in chunks and if you touch them your skin begins to swell, and rot, and come off in chunks, too, until the pain drives you mad and you blow your brains out. This, unfortunately, only happens once.
But you may want to blow your own brains out as what starts as a serviceable Jaws knock-off, complete with a mayor willing to sacrifice random kids to killer garfish to keep from “starting a panic” and tanking the local economy, tacks hard into all the things that made Jaws such a lousy book. The shark parts of Jaws are great, but most people forget the subplot about the mafia funding real estate development and Chief Brody's wife sleeping with half the town.
In The Lake there's a whole subplot about how a bunch of local citizens got burned by the bank when they bought up some land to lure the Bartel Corporation to Jericho in the first place. Somehow, Largent decided this is more interesting than killer garfish and after the first two gar attacks it's all real estate wheeling and dealing, until the lead character discovers the Bartel plant is a secret cover for a government project to develop a new form of energy to power drone surveillance but one of the power pods is leaking into the lake and it's causing these mutations. At that point, Largent decides that his book is in danger of becoming interesting again, so he eliminates the garfish completely and focuses on a cloud of toxic vapor that manifests every night and just sort of hovers over the lake like an evil fart before drifting casually through town, dissolving flesh, also like an evil fart.
There are a few gory descriptions of the effects of this toxic flatulence, but mostly the book is all real estate deals, imaginary chemistry, calculating wind speeds and trajectories, and even a last minute appearance by a giant garfish can't save it from sinking beneath the weight of its own misguided choices.
Not so with Saurian, a book about a were-dinosaur. And Miami real estate.
Okay, see, in the beginning there were these alien shapechangers who came to Earth. Noticing that the major life form were dinosaurs, they became dinosaurs, too, but then the comet that killed the dinosaurs hit and zapped their shapeshifting abilities. Some of the Gargantosauruses changed into mammals permanently, others stayed as Gargantosaurs, while a few mutants could shapeshift between the two forms. Cut to Beachside, Florida, 1957. Tom is being raised by two hapless alcoholics who seem like characters cut from Tennessee Williams’ latest play. Tom discovers a spooky mansion in the swamp, he loves movies about giant monsters, his parents beat him and cheat on each other and do all kinds of horrible things, and then a guy just gets sick of...I don't know. The Florida sun? Alcoholics? Either way, he transforms into a Gargantosaurus and levels the entire town, killing some people by stomping on them, eating others, crushing even more by slithering over them with his great, disgusting bulk then licking up their “jelly.” Tom is left traumatized (“Maybe they were drunks and losers,” he rages, later. “But they didn't deserve that to happen to them!”) and grows up to open a cheesy restaurant with a floorshow. But is he happy? Maybe, but not after his girlfriend badgers him into booking her as the lounge singer and alienates all his customers with her song “Love Meat”:
Iron chains of poverty
A prison do enfold
But you stuff your face with canapes
And the children, they turn cold. But as long as your fat little bellies are full
Why should you give a damn about the chosen few
You eat your mashed potatoes but the rest is bull
What'll happen when the poor do rise and shit all over you?
She gets fired and sleeps with Tom’s business partner, which seems like standard Florida nightclub behavior, but the trauma reawakens Tom's repressed memories of the Beachside monster attack! He goes to a local support group for survivors of monster attacks but everyone's a nut (big surprise) except for the leader, Mistress Dunn, who arranges for him to have dinner with one of the members, the attractive alcoholic and monster attack survivor, Samantha (“Yes, I do love vodka. In fact, I live to drink.”), and the two of them have sex, probably because of all the vodka. Now, Mistress Dunn reveals that she's not just a mutant survivor of the longlived Gargantosaur race, but her weird daughter with a fat face and terrible name, Franklina, is her secret weapon, a super-mutant Gargantosaur ultra-shapeshifter. And the monster that's nibbling on locals recently is actually real estate developer, philanthropist, and all-around nice guy, Gareth Bronmore. Franklina has dedicated herself to killing Bronmore, and she needs Tom and Samantha's help to do it. Because, see, even in human form, Gargantosaurs have weird spines on their backs and she needs Tom to head to a local charity event, go to the men's room, and when he's at the urinal next to Gareth Bronmore, he has to rub his back and see if he has the spines. What follows is so stupid, so ridiculous, and so crammed with full-throttle gore-orgies that it's impossible not to love it, as shapeshifting Gargantosaurs bite each other to death and slide over human beings, turning them into jelly. There are even speeches at the end from were-dinosaurs who dab away a single tear in the corner of their eyes as they rhapsodize over life and love and the importance of living each and every moment to its fullest. Is it good? Oh, god, no. It's a Leisure paperback. But it is entertaining, incompetent, and idiotic in all the ways a terrible but delightful monster book about a were-dinosaur from another galaxy who now drives a sports car and lives in Miami, can be.