LITTLE INFAMIES

Set in a backwater Greek village where a broken engagement can end in murder, the stories in Karnezis's debut collection are richly ironic antimorality tales. The characters are miscreants and dreamers: a priest so desperate to win the faith of his congregation that he stages a religious hoax; a doctor with hidden aspirations and a barkeep who knows all of the town's secrets. "Funeral of Stones" recounts the tale of mistreated twins whose father blames them for their mother's gruesome death in childbirth. They run away and plot a brilliant revenge against their father, infecting him with a deadly disease. What they don't reckon on is a miraculous antidote—antibiotics. In "Another Day on Pegasus," a bus driver nearly plows his vehicle into a rocky gulch, distracted by lustful fantasies about one of his passengers. In "Medical Ethics," the aging village doctor finishes a gynecological exam ("his mind was all that time occupied with the answers to the crossword he had left unfinished") only to be surprised by an impromptu marriage proposal from his virginal teenage patient. What's best about Karnezis's stories is not their sly plot twists or colorful portraits of village life (though these are good) but the deadpan conversations and monologues, alive with the author's subversive wit. The village doctor politely inquires about the teenager's stepfather. She politely answers, "He's still suffering from constipation. He says the medicines you've given him do him no good, and one of these days he's going to kill you." (Feb.)