Publisher's Weekly
In these 17 mostly urban horror stories from British author Williams (London Revenant), memory is often unreliable and reality is just as untrustworthy. A typical tale edges into the surreal and sometimes the supernatural, then turns to madness and violence. These disturbing fictions pose a great many questions that are, on second thought, perhaps better left unanswered. If violence itself is seldom shown, its immediate aftermath is. Even the tales that seem abruptly truncated or intentionally obscure still leave vivid impressions. In "Nest of Salt," a man obsessively seeks Circus Street, a hidden "blackspot" of London that's a "nexus of filth." In "The Owl," a young British couple expecting their first child settles into a fixer-upper in a small French village. Minor stress is amplified and adroitly twisted into wrenching disaster. The near-future novella "Nearly People," which was nominated for awards by both the British Fantasy Society and the International Horror Guild, depicts a grim quarantined sector whose inhabitants suffer from disease and starvation. A woman there receives a glimpse of hope-or does she? We're rarely sure of anything in these depraved and elegantly ambivalent stories, except that Williams writes with a poetic brutality that definitely makes him a dark voice to note. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.