Customer Reviews

Old Devil Moon

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This dark often amusing and satirical crime suspense anthology is a terrific anthology from one of the best short story authors today (Mr. Fowler's odd couple Bryant and May police procedural novels are also excellent). Each of the twenty-two entries is top rate. Baker St Irregulars will especially appreciate "The Lady Downstairs" starring Mr. Holmes's landlady while fans of 1960s British movies will relish the appearance of the late actor Terry-Thomas in the aptly named ghost story "Old Friends". Weird fun are "Turbo-Satan" in which two East Londoner slackers Daz and Mat text messaging to SATAN and even stranger "Take It All Back, Put It All Back" starring statistically bad luck magnet Lukas Forrest. Also superb is the Miami police officer struggling with "The Spider Kiss" mad disease spreading amidst residents in which an outbreak of insane human behavior in South Florida proves to have strange beastly origins. Well written, Christopher Fowler uses taken for granted aspects of everyday life like text messaging, walking the dog on a big city street, and comic books, etc. but runs them into dark dangerous devices and places.

Harriet Klausner

Weird situations, as only Christopher Fowler can imagine. I'm not a huge fan of short stories but I've been reading Fowler for a long time and he's so very good at strange!
As an author he's the English answer to Tim Powers (another of my top picks)who can make characters that are believeable, place them in the most bizare situations and you'll care about them. Not many can do it as smoothly as these two guys.
If you are a fan of the strangeness that lies just below or behind the very ordinary, I'd recommend not only these two writers but also Phil Rickman (another English author - call me biased if you like, a Brit living in U.S.A.)but you won't be disappointed.

If you're thinking about buying this you either already love Christopher Fowler's anthologies or you're browsing for an actual good short story writer. Either way just purchase this already. I've read quite a few anthologies and Christopher Fowler is up there for me with Matheson as masterful short story writers. You'd think it would be easier to write short stories but I find a lot of writers (especially famed novelists) just can't deliver. I'm positive anyone can find a story in here they'll love. I really think someone should produce a tv series based on Fowler's short stories one of these days.