I love a good vampire novel when I saw Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson as a recommendation by an author whose novel I'd recently read, an enjoyed Nat Cassidy who wrote Nestlings. I decided to give it a try. The story is about Duane Minor, a bartender just back from a tour in Vietnam.

He's married and he and his wife have adopted their 13-year-old niece, Julia. Life is going fairly well in spite of the fact that Duane is an alcoholic who tends bar a recipe for disaster, if ever there was one. Apologies to Sam Malone. Things are far from perfect as their niece. Julia has troubles at school and is trying to find out what it means to be part of a loving family.

Things start to take an even worse turn. When two men enter the bar he works at and confront the owner when he asks about it, he's told to basically mind his own business. As a combat vet and the owner's family member, the option to mind his own business wasn't something he could take. When he found out that the two men were dealing drugs in the bar, he took action.

What follows is an examination of grief and loss, and the horror of an unhinged madman who also happens to be a vampire taking his revenge for Duane's intervention. If there's one thing I love more than a vampire novel, it's a novel with imperfect characters. Dwayne is a broken man who has been slowly put back together by the love of his wife and the care of her family.

When things go badly, he begins to fall apart. And he's not the only broken character in the novel. Julia is incredibly angry and lashes out at every opportunity to distance herself from other people. Watching her change in more ways than one was a really fascinating exploration of the things we do when vengeance is the only thing we can focus on.

Once things have fallen apart, it's up to his niece who wants to take vengeance for the loss of her aunt and other family members to take care of business. She goes to extreme methods to track down the man and have the resources necessary to confront what turns out to be a very old, very crazy vampire.

This is not a happy book. So much goes wrong. The few things that go right don't last. Rosson has created characters that I deeply care about by the end of the novel. What's especially cutting is that from the very beginning of the novel, it's patently obvious that important characters have a short shelf life for all the darkness and despair of filling the pages.

This is an incredibly engaging read. In addition to the well-crafted characters, the plot moves along at a fast pace and the situations that occur are believable in spite of the fantastic circumstances. All in all, I'm glad to have discovered Keith Rosson and I look forward to reading more of his books.

I give this story an enthusiastic five stars. Just make sure you have some happy things to do after you read it.

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