By Sandy Amazeen Jul 22, 2008, 1:30 GMT
Award winning author Christopher Fowler is a prolific writer with a dark, twisted sense of humor as evidenced by this latest collection of twenty-two tales that delight and horrify. Fowler’s style takes contemporary headlines and adds a perverse, often thought provoking spin into uncharted territories. The opening story, “Threads” is an excellent example of this as readers become engrossed in the wife’s narration of her failing marriage and the couple’s trip to the Middle East which, according to her husband, will be a good opportunity for them to start again. After an ill-advised bit of thievery, what they got was skin crawlingly different then anything they could have imagined.
A woman finds absolution after returning to the scene of a childhood crime, a crime that forever tainted her relationship with her mother and caused mental problems throughout most of her life in “Invulnerable”. A couple of Miami police cops couldn’t help but notice a rise in the number of “crazies” they were having to respond to. Although one of them sought out the cause from an old buddy who knew about esoteric spiritual matters, it didn’t spare him the madness that was effectively sweeping through the city in “Spider Kiss”. A fourteen-year-old boy loses his innocence, a father discovers who the real low-life criminal types are, secret museums, deadly cell phones and more can be found in this innovative, slightly disturbing anthology that will leave readers thinking as well as entertained. Short stories don’t come much better then this so dive in and enjoy Fowler’s warped world.
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