'Messages'

This is a rather gritty story in Sparks from the Fire, telling the tale of threats amassing on the doormat of a rather unpleasant man. The messages seem to be vague threats - 'There is a score to settle' - but when the nameless protagonist reads them in order they tell a story, albeit obliquely.

Again I was reminded of Ruth Rendell's spare, dispassionate approach to the doings of brutal people. Nobody thinks of himself as a thug if he has the capacity to think at all, and the recipient of the messages has a conscience of sorts. It transpires that his past as a nightclub owner is catching up with him, but in an unexpected way.

Not exactly a ghost story, this one, but firmly in the tradition of weird fiction with a hard edge. No easy outs, no simple answers, just the sense of menace and encroaching darkness in a life already empty of most feeling.

More from this running review very soon, I hope.