"A Birthright of Living Death!"
The Legacy is an occult horror novel by John Coyne, essentially based on the screenplay of the 1978 movie of the same name. I shy away from 'novelizations', but this has been enlarged with enough original concepts to make it a winner worth reading - indeed, a book that was more popular than the film.
I was a big fan of horror films when this came out over forty years ago (when I was eleven and too young to see the film).
Flash forward to a thrift store paperback found for .50cents, and my curiosity is fulfilled. Despite the great cover, it's not only about a lady with a big ring who pets a cat.
Maggie Walsh and her boyfriend have been invited to England under false pretences and end up guests at an elaborate rural estate with five other people, all somehow indebted to the owner for their wealth and power. Summoned to his hospital type bedside, Maggie is given a ring by the dying owner against her will that she can't remove. Over the next five days the guests begin to die off in bizarre accidents, and Maggie finds there is no escape. She can only watch as the legacy claims them one by one.
I appreciated reading the book before seeing the movie, filmed in England starring Katherine Ross and Sam Elliott. It's the film where they met (the start of their 45 year relationship), and still holds up as a inventive thriller. John Coyne (at the time emerging as a top horror writer along with John Saul and Stephen King) added so much back story and suspense, it stands on it's own as a horror novel with some quite creepy moments (and even the more obvious, still part of the fun). What's not to like about being trapped in a house with Satanists for the weekend? If you are fan of scary novels, you won't be disappointed. It's in the same style as The Omen, The Sentinel and Rosemary's Baby - and there's a happy (?) ending. Recommended for those that like this sort of thing.
If this has intrigued your interest, you can watch the film for free on You Tube
1979 / Paperback / 246 pages
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