Author and critic Kim Newman's first book of collected short stories (he reminds that another is already on the way) makes for intriguing reading. The five novels under his own name (there are several others under his Jack Yeovil alias) make for invigorating, bold reading, but none are particularly satisfying. Newman himself is the first to admit his principle failing is his own cleverness, overloading the books with too many ingenious asides, an excess of inventiveness that leaves them looking less like cohesive novels, more like a string of (admittedly sublime) anecdotes. To that end, this collection is possibly the best novel he's never written.

Taken from a decade of work, the fifteen pieces in here offer the perfect forum for their author's resourcefulness. Newman is not one for the twist-in-the-tale (cheers all around), and even when the odd piece nudges in that direction, there is more than enough substance to stop it collapsing in on its one-joke premise: 'The Next-But-One-Man', a paean to the very English art of queuing, is so alert to its possibilities it has a touch of the Ballards about it; the traditional horror story 'Week Woman' buries an abundance of pop-culture references (Jeffrey Archer, Mickey Spillane, Annie Hall, music-terrorists Einsturzende Neubauten) inside a one-shot idea even the master Ramsey Campbell would recognise; and his take on anally-retentive limited edition collecting, 'The Man Who Collected Barker', is darkly charming.

Taken as a whole like this though, there are surprising threads running through Newman's work that are sharply illuminated, not least the running characters of Rockford Files-inspired private detective Sally Rhodes, and the shadowy, sinister media-mogul Derek Leech. They appear and reappear throughout the book, alone and together - Rhodes in the absurdist conflation of The Maltese Falcon with Night of The Demon, 'Mother Hen', and the splendid deconstruction of the menacing cabals behind contemporary toy manufacturing, 'Gargantuabots Versus The Nice Mice'. Leech is the ominous presence in 'SQPR', a reimagining of football and popular culture in a post-Thatcher age (its author notes his predictions were almost totally off-beam); and the title story, where Leech intends to revive the once popular comic strip Dr Shade for his newspaper, but instead invokes the fascist vigilante the country deserves. (Unfortunately there is no space in here for the cartoon strips printed alongside the story's 1990 appearance in Interzone).

Together, Rhodes and Leech lock horns over an attempt to harness occult powers to win an ITV franchise (Newman is nothing if not versatile) in the splendid 'Organ Donors', which acts as a curtain-raiser to the most recent (and best) of his novels, The Quorum.

Unique to this collection, one of the longest, and certainly one of the best, 'The McCarthy Witch Hunt' rather wonderfully posits the idea of a real witch-hunt after the forces of magick helped rout Nazism but have fallen out of favour in Archbishop Hoover's brave new 50s America. With its sly wit and references to sources as diverse as Bewitched and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, it's a terrific primer for Newman's art.

From a splendid cover design to the author's comments at the end of each piece, this collection is a delight. Whether that means he should give up on novels is another matter entirely.