Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson
I would like to thank Black Crow Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Black Crow
Published – Out Now
Price – £19.99 hardback £4.99 ebook
It's the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with her Aunt Heidi and Uncle Duane after a tragedy. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi's love and pa-tience, the three of them are building a family.
Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia shot through with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance.
As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley's ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty al-leyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota - only to have him turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?
Books are often in conversation with other books. Often the veins of stories have influenced authors, who influence authors and then influenced yet more authors. Not copying but spinning tales with an influence of the past ideally with their own fresh spin. I make it a policy not to really try to guess which books influenced an author as I’m likely wrong and saying this book is like X or Y will often annoy such as many people as it could tempt. Reading Keith Rosson’s enjoyable historical horror novel Coffin Moo its not hard to think of the very chunky epic horror novels of the late twentieth century but there are some interesting choices made and also some areas I think follow the same issues of the past too.
In December 1975 Duane Minor is a Vietnam veteran now working in his mother-in-law’s bar. Things are tense already with the Minors unexpectedly having to take care of their teenage niece Julia. But the bar is also attracting the strange attention of a biker group who Minor fears it trying to sell drugs on the premises. Against his mother-in-law’s wishes he gets into a confrontation with this group and their mysterious leader John Varley. Varley’s revenge is bloody and brutal and Duane and Julia find themselves consumed by grief and a desire for revenge, but the evidence is showing that Varley is not human, he has been around a long time, has immense strength and does not appear when photographed. The duo are about to find the supernatural secrets of the US and a quest for revenge that will change all who go on it and hard choices will be made.
I really liked Rosson’s storytelling. We’re dropped into the time of bars, biker gangs and when people clearly didn’t know smoking was a bad thing. It has got a working class gritty small town feel throughout. Where life is hard and it is possible to hide without the power of the internet or mobiles. We get to know Duane and Julia pre and post their meeting Varley. This dup is not perfect. Duane has a temper and while likes to do the right thing tends to jump in the deep end. Julia after what has happened to her too is also more likely to punch a bully than report them. The family unit they form is what has kept them both sane and preventing their worse natures out. What happens when good people though lose that? We get to witness them go from happy to grief-stricken and it really carries an emotional punch as we see Duane fall back into alcohol and Julia feel so alone. Characters you care about are essential and its after Varley things get very unexpected.
John Varley is the fascinating antagonist. Tall, strong and yes let’s be spoilerish he’s a vampire whenever he arrives on the page is magnetic. He’s not a mastermind he’s very much looking after himself so all actions serve him, and he enjoys it when that means people must be punished or more accurately in his case shred and ate. He’s formidable and Roseen’s take on the vampire is much more this undercover, ruthless and bloody creature. We slowly unpeel his past and get some additional secrets and abilities that continue to underline how dangerous he is. So, what possible choice to take on him would you make for revenge. We meet child vampires, bar crawling vampires and dying vampires and all point to where the Minors need to go and it’s a fascinating choice and changes the tone of the novel and how we see those characters in the latter half. The story moves into revenge quest territory, and the two forces get closer and closer towards a final bloody confrontation which works very well.
There are though some issues I had and actually reminded me of the problems of the past. The death of Heidi, Duane’s wife is unfortunate as she seems to fall into that type of character you like but has to due to feed the plot. She doesn’t have too much to do than just be a likeable victim for avenging. The other choice I’m less comfortable about is the reveal that Varley is bisexual and falls in love with a human (albeit a clearly psychotic one). Having a queer villain when there is only one minor gay character elsewhere in the story for me felt a problematic and old-fashioned choice. This may have been helped if we’d seen much more of Varley’s life and how he dealt with his sexual identity but instead we seem to have focus just in this latter stage and it didn’t really work to give our villain any feel of humanity.
The other issue is this story is very much reminding me of the horror epic novels of huge chunky tales telling big stories. I like the pace here but there are some large and unexpected time jumps. After the main incident ending in tragedy and a hard decision, we jump time to suddenly find Duane and Julia now very clear how they work together, walked over the morality of their issues and now known to Varley. It feels rushed and there was a lot of interesting moral dilemma not faced head on that I think based on the story elements I did convince me that Rosson can tell those kind of tales. A bit more time to breathe and expand the world and characters here would have been welcome.
Coffin Moon is a pacy, exciting and fascinating story and Rosson is clearly an author to keep an eye on. I came away enjoying this although did feel this story is perhaps using the style of the past a little too much and will be fascinated to see what they do next. Well worth a look!
