Bleak cityscapes dimmed by urban blight and human despair give rise to unique horrors in this virtuoso book of disturbing, cutting-edge tales from British author Lane (The Earth Wire and Other Stories
). Lane's sketches of cast-off teens, cruising gays and drug-dependent loners begin in settings rank with gritty realism—pickup bars, abandoned squats, slush-caked alleyways—but gradually veer into strange and surreal territories. In "The Bootleg Heart," a student aroused by sounds of passion from the room above finds himself titillated even more when he learns their necrophilic origin. "Coming of Age" tells of a father who discovers just how estranged he has become from his missing son when a trail of clues leads him to a ramshackle house of Breughelesque nightmares. In "Among the Dead," the modern workplace is so ghoulishly cold and insensitive that it doesn't seem unusual for the office workers to snack at the local cemetery. Even the stories that are not manifestly macabre show Lane's exceptional skill at conjuring grimness through sharp slashes of poetic prose and imagery. (Feb.)
