THE LAST COIN
James P. Blaylock
Ace 1989
PB 328 pgs
ISBN 0-441-47075-0
Very Highly Recommended

Eccentric Andrew Vanbergen and his long suffering wife Rose, run an inn in
Southern California. Little do they realize that one of their guests, Jules
Pennyman, is an evil man of literally Biblical proportions. For Jules is on
a quest to obtain THE thirty pieces of silver that Judas was paid to betray
Jesus. He has most of them now, but with them all he will have vast powers.
The only thing standing in his way is the lovable, bumbling, paranoid
Andrew, and Jules just may have met his match.

James Blaylock writes wonderfully witty and incredibly offbeat fantasy. Some
of his characters are so eccentric as to be almost committable and even his
"normal" ones are generally skewed to some extent. His storylines are far
from typical and his storytelling is generally smooth if somewhat slow. THE
LAST COIN is perhaps his best story yet, and certainly his early sequence of
Andrew's attempt to rid himself of his snoring aunt's cats, is a classic of
lunacy literature.

Read it, but be prepared to have a sore side from the laughter.