Christopher Fowler specialises in stylish urban and suburban nightmares, usually London-centred. His first novel was Roofworld (1998). Uncut is his eighth collection of short stories--a significant mark of success in times when publishers insist loudly that "shorts don't sell". These 21 pieces range from deepest black comedy to gory and over-the-top Grand Guignol, with one Gothic excursion into a world like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast (where chaps have names like Leperdandy). A repeated Fowler technique is to conjure up our worst fears or yuckiest urban myths associated with something quite ordinary, like unfamiliar cities, dentistry, having the builders in, air travel, junk food, supermarkets or laundrettes. Then, with a fixed grin of manic glee, he demonstrates that we've fallen far short of imagining the worst. I'm confident that many readers of one particular story here will resolve never ever to visit the dentist again (you thought that scene in Marathon Man was bad?). Many of these end with a vicious rabbit-punch to our expectations, either physical or psychological. As Fowler himself says, he writes about "a world where the innocent suffer, the guilty go unpunished, and the only way you can be safe is by staying very, very still". To be read with caution, in small doses. -- David Langford
