Admirers of the outstanding Time Out Book of London Short Stories stand easy – this new collection is nothing like as good. Twenty-three ‘cutting edge’ authors are promised, but barely a half dozen come up with anything like the goods. The majority – names like Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Burns and Maureen Freely amongst them – are in one eye and out the other, while some – Lisa Natalie Pearson, Rikki Ducornet – are frankly unreadable. Even the better authors are often showcased at half-power.

Both Jonathan Carroll and Christopher Fowler serve up sweet but aimless shaggy dog tales (literally in Fowler’s case). Charlie Higson has the smarts to realise New York is a cliché, and the balls to set ‘Suck on This’ in Bolton, but has no idea where to go next. Much better, Jonathan Coe’s ‘9th and 13th’ is a small but perfectly formed chamber piece about small but perfectly formed missed opportunities.

Which leaves only usual suspects Kim Newman and Michael Moorcock to effortlessly steal the show. The former thinks himself into the mind of the jaded police chief of Coastal City, a New York relocated to a timeless comic book world beset by costumed heroes and super-villains. Short and smart. Moorcock’s ‘Doves in the Circle’, on the other hand, remains fairly minor Moorcock, but is so beautifully written it towers over the pseudo-sleaze and yawnsome pretension offered us elsewhere. •

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