Night Prayers

Frank Coffey

Okay, first things first: Frank Coffey is not one of Dean Koontz' pseudonyms, despite some speculation to the contrary. And anyone who's actually spent time tracking down Coffey's work will notice a marked difference in writing styles right off the bat. (Brian Coffey, on the other hand, WAS a Koontz pseudonym. Different animal altogether.) So if you're looking for Dean R., this ain't the place to poke your nose.

Coffey enjoyed a small amount of success in the eighties before fading into obscurity as the horror-novel craze went back to its normal level. Kind of sad, because Coffey wrote some pretty fun stuff, including this little tidbit about a girl who washes up on the coast of Maine in a very, very old ship and causes some very nasty things to happen to certain town residents. If you're a person who doesn't want to know the whodunit till the end, this isn't for you; it would take a fairly thick reader not to figure out how the prologue relates to the rest of the book by page three or so. Coffey's emphasis here is on the WHYdunit, and while it's not a particularly original why, there's also a WHO'SitgonnabedunTO aspect that makes the whole thing work. That should satisfy the mystery folks, the supernatural elements are all there for the horror folks, and everyone's happy. The characters are drawn well enough to keep the reader's interest, the pages turn quickly, and while no one's going to confuse Frank Coffey's books with M. R. James, they're certainly some good reading.