Coffin Moon

Keith Rosson won the Shirley Jackson Award for his story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. His stories have appeared in Nightmare, Cream City, and the Southwest Review. He's received praise and critical acclaim for his full-length horror novels The Devil by Name, Fever House, and Road Seven. His newest novel is the 2025 hardcover Coffin Moon, published by Random House. 

Coffin Moon, set in 1975, features protagonist Duane Minor, a man rebuilding his life after returning home with PTSD from the Vietnam War. He is a recovering alcoholic and works as a bartender in his wife’s family's bar. Duane and his wife Heidi are raising their teenage niece Julia, who has emotional scars of her own from her troubled past. The makeshift family is fighting and striving for stability and peace. 

While working at the bar, Duane encounters a dark and malignant force named John Varley, who tears at the threadbare fabric holding together all that he loves. Duane is then thrust into a depressive and alcohol induced state while Julia seethes with a need for revenge. 

The two embark on a journey of hide-and-seek with Varley, a vampire criminal with a trail of bodies and a bloody history. The duo becomes entangled in a supernatural world that tests loyalty and the love of family. The desire for vengeance takes Duane and Julia from Portland, Oregon, across the highways to North Dakota. The brutality and body counts rise while Varley grapples with loss of his own, his humanity, or what little remains. The three are saturated with a grief that is palpable and a need to avenge that is all-consuming. 

Coffin Moon is an emotional and visceral vampire tale with memorable characters that are well-developed. Rosson’s telling of the vampire story is not simply a horror offering but a homogeneous blend of gore-soaked revenge laced with heartache and loss. Duane, Julia and Varley share their tales through their perspective, which makes the past events more dynamic. I was glued to the story and Rosson's central question – once our humanity is lost, can it be reclaimed and at what cost? 

Get Coffin Moon HERE.

Survivor Song

Paul Tremblay's horror novel Survivor Song was published in 2020 by William Morrow in hardcover and Titan in paperback. While the book has a COVID-19 feel to it, matching the intense year of publication, the author actually wrote the book two years prior, in 2018. It proved to be a timely publication.

The book takes place in Massachusetts as a new strain of rabies begins affecting the population. The illness prompts the infected to rage, battle, bite, and create overwhelming chaos. Think 28 Days Later on a state level. This is the early wave of the attacks, with many first response workers, facilities, and government agencies unprepared for the pandemic. 

As the novel begins, readers are introduced to Natalie, a pregnant woman living in suburbia with her husband. In this opening nightmare, Natalie's husband is murdered by an infected man, and in the attack, she is bitten. There's a sense of urgency for Natalie to get to a hospital for a vaccination, yet the chaos on the streets and highways makes travel difficult.

Natalie's friend, the protagonist of Tremblay's narrative, is a British pediatrician nicknamed Rams. The two were college roommates and live in the same area. Rams comes to Natalie's aid, and the two begin a perilous quest to overcome countless obstacles, bureaucracy, and waves of infected as they race against time to vaccinate Natalie at a functioning hospital.

At 320 pages, I felt that Survivor Song should have felt a bit more epic. It was my misunderstanding that this novel was a road trip journey, encompassing more landscapes and places as the two “survivors” travel from place to place for shelter. Instead, this is more of a confined road trip, featuring many scenes inside of doctors' offices and hospitals, albeit in a frenzied, panic-fused pace. I think the element of a long road trip ripe with danger would have been more appealing to me, as David Moody, Robert McCammon, and Brian Keene have proven in their more enjoyable post-apocalyptic novels. 

I enjoyed the Rams character immensely, but felt Natalie was a weak link in the story. Her characterization was annoying, with her heightened demands for more urgent care a repetitive cycle that wore itself thin as the book continued. Yet, the star of the show is really the situation – average people placed in extreme circumstances. There were moments of sheer horror, dread, and doom, all placed periodically between passages of subdued dialogue. The book's finale is worth the price of admission and will stay with me for ages. 

Survivor Song is an enjoyable, post-apocalyptic-styled novel that reminds us all just how close we came to annihilation. Get the book HERE.

Harry Bosch #01 - The Black Echo

Michael Connelly graduated from the University of Florida in 1980 and became a journalist. He placed as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, which earned him a position with the Los Angeles Times as a crime reporter. After seeing Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, based on Raymond Chandler's novel, Connelly pursued mystery writing. His first novel, The Black Echo, was published by Little, Brown in 1992, and won an Edgar as Best First Novel.

The Black Echo introduces Connelly's beloved character Harry Bosch, a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective. The character has appeared in 24 of Connelly's novels and spawned an Amazon Prime series that ran seven seasons. As of the time of this writing, a prequel series is set to air on MGM+. 

Bosch served as a tunnel rat in the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. This fact is prevalent throughout the novel, as Bosch realizes his newest homicide case involves Billy Meadows, a former member of Bosch's military unit. Bosch had helped Billy with substance abuse and housing. Bosch arrives at the scene of the crime to find Billy's corpse stuffed in a tunnel. His department suggests Billy's death is just drug-related, but Bosch, like any good paperback detective, suspects there's more to the story.

Like any good series opener, Connelly provides a detailed history of his lead character, delving into Bosch's upbringing, his military service, and the most recent abrasion with the department, a conflict that demoted the detective from Robbery-Homicide Division to Hollywood Division's homicide bureau. With this demotion comes the obligatory disgruntlement with authority, and a new resolve that pushes the character into every crevice of the case. Bosch's upheaval with the department's Internal Affairs is a prominent portion of the book's plot.

Billy's murder investigation leads Bosch to team with an FBI agent named Wish. The two form a working relationship that conflicts with another federal agent, Rourke, who is a suspect with ties to both Billy and expatriates from the Vietnam War. Bosch and Wish extend their working relationship into an intimate affair, which adds a unique complexity by the book's finale.

The Black Echo didn't knock my socks off. At 375 pages, the book proved to be a slow burn with lots of dialogue between characters. Nearly the first 100 pages is simply Billy's body being discovered and Bosch being introduced to the case. There are long, plodding pages of Wish's backstory and the typical day-to-day routine of the investigation. It's an intriguing case, and the various threads of the plot took me where I needed to go, but the journey just seemed overstated. By 1992, the 180-page fast-paced detective yarns had doubled to pad the pages, which bogged down what would otherwise have been a mesmerizing read. The Black Echo is good, not great.

Get the book HERE.

Red Mist

Red Mist was published in paperback in April 1989 by Popular Library. The cover, featuring model Steve Holland, was created by Ben Perini. My efforts to determine a biography of author Michael O'Toole failed to produce any results. Further, the book doesn't present any information on the author. Your guess on who he is as good as mine.

This police procedural is set in Los Angeles. Vic Perry is a Raiders fan, a wealthy day trader, a womanizer, and a serial killer. Through 268 pages, Perry prowls the city for victims, often led by his hot temper and infatuation with power. He kills victims by shooting them point blank, often in the face, with a .38 Smith & Wesson, a gun that O'Toole sometimes foolishly refers to as a magnum. After several kills, Perry's onslaught attracts the attention of two LAPD detectives, Tony and Frank.

Through the book's opening chapters, readers ride in Perry's maniacal headspace, experiencing every detail from lust to rage. O'Toole develops a relationship between Perry and a local sexy barmaid named Andy. The two engage in pornographic sex on-page, similar to the graphic scenes found in adult westerns. In fact, the author injects sex in most of Perry's ambition, going as far as having one victim perform oral sex on Perry before the madman blows her chin off (with the revolver). 

When Tony is murdered by Perry, Frank begins an investigation into his partner's murder, tying it into the rampage shootings around the city linked to the same shooter. There's a surprise thrown in with Frank's wife that leads the police officer into some really dark places while hunting the serial shooter. 

Red Mist is far from a masterpiece, but was just engaging enough to keep the pages flipping. I enjoyed Frank's character and the ruthless aggression O'Toole injected with this radical villain. Whether or not the graphic sex and gore is too much is in the eye of the beholder. I thought it was borderline indulgent, but it never erased the plot. There were reasons for everything, which sometimes just all adds up at the end. Red Mist is an entertaining, recommended read. Get it HERE.

Dirk Pitt #01 - Pacific Vortex

Despite having five series installments ahead of it, Pacific Vortex! is still considered the first of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels. The book was first published in 1983, six years after The Mediterranean Caper (aka Mayday). Yet, in that book, there are some enticing references to a prior underwater Pitt adventure. After 1981's Night Probe!, Cussler decided to write the events mentioned in The Mediterranean Caper and bring readers up to speed on Pitt's first grandiose adventure, Pacific Vortex!.

The novel begins with an unusual event affecting a U.S. submarine called Starbuck. The vessel goes missing in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii. After an extensive search, the Navy can't determine the whereabouts or fate of Starbuck. The loss is chalked up to a mysterious vortex that has plagued over 30 ships since 1956. But, leave it to Pitt to get to the bottom of it – the ocean.

After recovering notes written by Starbuck's commanding officer, Pitt reports to NUMA and undertakes a rescue mission to recover the vessel and any crewmen still alive. Pitt learns of a mythical island north of the Hawaiian Islands that disappeared ages ago, similar to the fate of Atlantis. With aid, Pitt finds the specific place to search and, within days, is on board Starbuck. But what he finds is something of a misnomer - an underwater city functioning as a type of above-ground prepper fortress.

Cussler's novel places Pitt in all of the usual situations, speeding vehicles, volcanoes, swanky dinners, torture chambers, and aboard both ancient ships and technological modern marvels. The scenes in which Pitt investigates Starbuck felt like something out of a horror movie. The isolated tomb-like vessel eerily sitting in the ocean's junkyard was written with a sense of atmosphere, lulling me into a false security before all Hell broke loose. The mystery behind the crew's disappearance, the horrific nature of the commanding officer's notes, and the idea of something unnatural – supernatural – occurring were all so captivating.

This book has a huge impact on Pitt's future, mainly a short-lived love interest with a woman named Summer, that will produce some surprising results later. Pacific Vortex! may be most remembered by fans for that part of the series through-story. But, this is a fun, pulpy romp that reminded me of a typical Doc Savage novel – the flight towards fear, mystery, and thrilling adventure. Recommended!

Get the book HERE.