'The Coroner's Collector'

Subtitled 'A Good Body Washed Up on the Beach Story', this tale from Last Stop Wellsbourne is at first confined to the realms of grotty realism. The protagonist Shaun Day works for the coroner's service doing what we've all seen done in dozens of crime series and thrillers - bag 'em and bin 'em. We meet him encountering a body on the beach, who seems to have fallen into the sea while in the act of, ahem, pleasuring himself.

In the next scene, Shaun's attractive neighbour Letitia asks him to bury her dead cat. It turns out that Letitia is a writer, and she makes friends with Shaun to get material for a new book, which proves a bestseller. The lead character in the book is one Shane Knight, who is a kind of doppelganger for Shaun. Shane is such a well-realised character that he starts to usurp the 'real' coroner's collector. And it's not just the dead he collects...

This is an interesting take on the idea of the double, blended neatly with that old standby, the fictional character who comes to life. I'm not sure I entirely understood why what happens, happens, but that's probably down to me. It's a haunting tale without a ghost, a tale of horror that doesn't attempt to mask the banality of death.

So, another winner in my humble etcetera. More from this collection soon. The next story takes us back into Brighton's history as a seaside resort for the rich and famous, not least the godawful Prince Regent, aka George IV. Which sounds intriguing.