Grey(1988) and The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed
(1991), in which the restless spirits are more likely
to be victims in need of help than menacing figures
themselves.
Much of his work in the late 1980s was sci-
ence fiction, but almost all of his books published
after 1990 are fantasy, several of which are out-
standing. The best of these is Jeremy Thatcher,
Dragon Hatcher(1991), whose title character pur-
chases a dragon’s egg with predictable but quite
touching results. This was the middle volume of a
loosely connected series about a magic shop that
began with The Monster’s Ring(1989) and contin-
ued with Jennifer Murdley’s Toad(1992), an amus-
ing variation of the charmed prince story, and The
Skull of Truth(1997). The Dragonslayers(1994) is a
more traditional and less interesting heroic fantasy,
also for younger readers, but Goblins in the Castle
(1992) is a delightful story about a boy who discov-
ers that goblins and other creatures are living se-
cretly in a creepy old castle.
Into the Land of the Unicorns(1994) intro-
duced the Unicorn Chronicles, transporting a girl
from our world into an alternate reality where the
unicorns are in danger. The story continues in Song
of the Wanderer(2001). Coville’s fiction has grown
less frequent in recent years, but the quality has re-
mained consistently high. Juliet Dove, Queen of
Love(2003) is particularly effective, as are many of
the short stories collected in Oddly Enough(1994)
and Odder Than Ever(1999). Coville has also
edited several anthologies for younger readers,
mostly of supernatural and suspense stories.
Coyne, John(1937– )
John Coyne was a victim of the collapse of the hor-
ror market in the early 1990s, so his career essen-
tially spans a single decade, starting with The
Legacy(1979), a surprisingly interesting noveliza-
tion of a screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, a variation
of the Ten Little Indians plot. A handful of people
are invited to the remote mansion of a man with
occult powers, each hoping to be the beneficiary of
his will. His first original novel appeared almost si-
multaneously. In The Piercing(1979) a woman is
troubled by miraculous transformations once a
week, manifestations that capture the public’s at-
tention and result in wide-scale publicity. Al-
though the church asserts that the effects are only
an elaborate hoax, the protagonist priest realizes
that they are genuinely supernatural, if not holy.
Although they are claimed as signs from a benign
God, he believes they are evidence of satanic in-
volvement. The powerful religious theme is partic-
ularly effective, as is the clear effort to blur the
distinction between good and evil.
The Searing(1980) presents a somewhat simi-
lar plot on a much wider scale. All of the female
inhabitants of a remote town are subject to sud-
den, inexplicable attacks of sexual arousal, even at
totally inappropriate times. At the same time, sev-
eral of the infants in the area are mysteriously
killed. Although the buildup is excellent, Coyne’s
resolution is less satisfying this time, involving in-
terference by enigmatic alien creatures. Hobgoblin
(1981) is much better. The protagonist is a young
boy whose fascination with role playing games and
the use of monstrous disguises is linked to his con-
viction that there are creatures sharing the world
with us that remain invisible except to those who
know how to look for them. He throws a Hal-
loween party for his friends to which he invites the
fantasy creatures as well, and what follows is a
bizarre, sometimes surreal, and entertainingly am-
biguous mix of self-delusion and genuine magic.
The Shroud (1983) returned to a religious
theme, but this time with the more subtle horror of
his previous book. A priest is troubled by the ap-
parition of a shrouded figure, which lures him to-
ward an apparent heresy. The Hunting Season
(1987) is very marginal but intensely suspenseful,
but his next novel, Fury(1989), failed to match
the quality of Coyne’s previous work. The protago-
nist in this case experiences moments of revelation
in which she realizes she is a reincarnation of a
prehistoric human, and she becomes subject to
episodes in which she is transformed into a vicious
killer in response to those memories. Coyne’s last
novel was Child of Shadows(1990), a return to his
original form. A woman resigns her job to take
care of a homeless boy, but shortly after moving to
a rural location she discovers that the local people
have taken a violent dislike to the child, who may
not even be human. Coyne’s short story “The
Cabin in the Woods” (1976) is also quite good.70 Coyne, John