Literature / Coffin Moon

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It's 1975, and Duane Minor is back home from his tour in Vietnam, and is trying to readjust to civilian life as a bartender, and connect with his niece Julia, who is now being raised by Duane and his wife, Heidi. Some shady bikers start causing trouble in the bar, led by vampire John Varley, and when Duane kicks them out, Varley retaliates by brutally killing Heidi and her parents. This sets Julia and Duane on a revenge quest as they attempt to track down Varley across the Pacific Northwest.

Coffin Moon provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Ending: After Varley is dead, Julia leaves to fulfill her promise to Adeline, and Duane is left alone. He weighs his options: he can either live as a vampire, forced to kill others just to survive, or end his own life using the last silver bullet or walking outside in the sunlight. The book ends before he decides.
• Bloody Horror: When Duane goes upstairs to his apartment to check on Heidi, he discovers their bedroom coated in blood, even reaching the ceiling. Heidi's been essentially torn to pieces, and he struggles to identify the parts strewn around the room.
• Bloodlust: Varley is a vampire who prefers taking out his victims through bloody, violent murder instead of a classic neck bite. He's known in the vampire community for leaving bloody scenes of ripped apart victims in his wake.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: When running away from Portland, Varley runs into Johan, and takes him along on his spree across the Pacific Northwest. They eventually fall in love with one another.
• Conscription: Before the events of the novel, Duane was drafted into the Vietnam War, and though he considers trying to dodge the draft, he ultimately decides against it and serves his tour, coming back traumatized by his experience.
• Crusading Widow: After Heidi's murder, Duane and his niece Julia go through heaven and earth to track Varley down and get revenge.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Duane forbids Varley and his bikers from selling Heroin in the bar, so Varley retaliates by tearing Duane's wife and in-laws to shreds.
• Emergency Transformation: When Julia and Duane finally catch up to Varley, he brutally attacks Duane, bringing him to the brink of death. With no other option to help him, Julia transforms him into a vampire, taking advantage of vampiric Healing Factor.
• Healing Factor: Vampires are able to heal from most wounds almost immediately. During a shootout, when Varley is hit by bullets, they just go clean through him, and he heals so quickly he barely notices them.
• Immortality Immorality: Most vampires have come to terms with living at the cost of killing others, shrugging it off as a necessity to survive.
• Missing Reflection: Vampires have no reflection, so the bartender at Lester's uses a handheld mirror to check potential customers before allowing them to meet with Travis, the silversmith.
• Monster Progenitor: The Maker is one of a handful of very old and powerful vampires. He's the one who originally turns Varley into a vampire. Because of his direct connection to a Maker, Varley has powers that other vampires don't.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Seriously injured, Varley attempts to convince Duane to keep him alive, by mentioning that eventually, he'll end up killing innocent people. He mentions how he started out wanting to only feed on "bad people," but eventually the hunger got to him, and he started killing innocents as well.
• Off the Wagon: Duane is eighteen months sober at the beginning of the book, but after Heidi's death, he starts heavily drinking again.
• Silver Bullet: Silver is a known weakness of vampires, injuries caused by silver don't heal, and those injuries cause the vampire's flesh to rot. Duane tracks down one of a few people in the US able to produce them - they're incredibly expensive, and one gets caught in the barrel of the gun, but when they work, they're incredibly effective.
• Silver Has Mystic Powers: Vampires are incredibly weak to silver, even being close to silver objects causes them physical harm, and drinking blood from someone shot with a silver bullet can make them sick.
• Supporting the Monster Loved One: Duane takes care of Julia after she becomes a vampire, seeking out dark places for her to hide, and covering up evidence of her feedings.
• Switching P.O.V.: The narrative mainly switches between Duane and Julia on their revenge journey, and Varley, as he tries to evade them.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: After Raymond throws a hot cast iron pan at his wife Linda's head, she shoots him in the face with his own gun. He'd been abusive toward her for a long time, and this attack was the final straw. She stops her daughter from making any attempt to hide the body, and willingly goes to jail for his death.
• Troubled Teen: Julia has a habit of getting into fights at school over minor disagreements, and is on the brink of being expelled. After her mother shot her abusive stepfather in the face right in front of her, she has a lot of emotions she doesn't quite know how to deal with.
• Vampire Child: Adeline is a vampire who appears to be about nine or ten years old, and though her age is never stated, she's clearly been around for a long time. She has a habit of turning other children to make into her companions.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Adeline warns Julia about this before she sets off on her journey, saying that revenge often leaves people feeling hollow in the end. After Varley is dead, Julia still seems to have purpose, but Duane feels lost and purposeless.
• Weakened by the Light: Vampires burn in the sunlight, so they have to find dark places to sleep during the day. When Duane is turned, he is put in the trunk of the car during the day.
• Wooden Stake: Briefly mentioned as a weakness of vampires. When Varley recollects on the handful of times he's been truly hurt since becoming a vampire, he recalls a time when a wooden stake was driven through his mouth, and it took him a very long time to heal.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: As Varley is slowly dying from his injuries, he goes into detail describing Heidi's death to Duane, reveling in the description of how she begged for her life.
• You Killed My Father: Julia's motivation for tracking down Varley is to get revenge for the death of her aunt and grandparents.