“Beautiful Days” is Joyce Carol Oate’s unsettling, triumphant collection of short macabre tales.
The eleven diverse stories included in this book are anything but beautiful. One of my favorite stories, “Fractal,” is gathered in the second part of the 334-page collection and is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. A mother drives her impetuous eleven-year-old son to the Fractal Museum in Portland, Maine, for an afternoon of art observing.
When the mother loses her son in the museum’s labyrinth exhibitions, the reader gets more than they bargained for as Oates delivers a terrifying tale of intrigue.
In Pushcart Prize-winning story, “Undocumented Alien,” a young African American is traveling abroad and stripped of not only his student visa but his complete identity. He is forced to undertake a handful of examinations that test his courage, strength, and will to live. In one of the most vital stories in the collection, Oates writes with unwavering earnestness, and the reader is put under a spell by her grimly gorgeous prose and honest but damaged exploration of the human psyche.
The writing is honed to perfection and bursting with range as Oates experiments with various structures and dialogue. “Beautiful Days” is a distinguishable cluster of fast-paced and unforgettable stories to devour in a single sitting.
The Wicked Hour
Witchcraft and Halloween pranks steer Alice Blanchard’s engrossing “The Wicked Hour.”
Burning Lake’s Halloween celebrations reveal a mysterious scene for Detective Natalie Lockhart. A young woman lies dead in an alley dumpster.
The victim’s identification is uncertain, except for the tattoo on her arm and the nodule bulging beneath her chin.
Lockhart retraces the victim’s steps, asking questions of would-be suspects. But her tepid investigation yields no clues of the victim’s identity or anyone related to her.
As Natalie expands her investigation and digs deeper down darker paths, her door-to-door inquiries rouse a few curious townsfolk, placing the dogged detective in harm’s way. Lockhart’s persistence generates further danger as a scintillating story about the victim surfaces, tying a string of past murders and disappearances to the ongoing case.
Natalie becomes a target. Somebody close to the victim will stop at nothing to silence Natalie and end this investigation for good.
Blanchard’s atmospheric and mysterious small-town setting is a solid asset to “The Wicked Hour.” Series fans will know what they’re getting into. Still, newbies might want to revisit the previous book “Trace of Evil” to help familiarize themselves with the characters and storylines of this venerable series.
Confessions on the 7:45
Secrets and lies lead to murder and chaos in Lisa Unger’s compulsive, well-established, high-wired trapeze act, “Confessions on the 7:45.”
Selena Murphy befriends a stranger on a train named Martha, a woman who, at first glance, looks strangely familiar to her. She thinks she has seen the woman before, but she can’t recall where. Then Martha’s confession to Selena about her boss’s sexual harassment episode ignites fury inside Selena who has experienced something similar.
As the train stops abruptly on the tracks, a conversation develops over shots of vodka. Amid their brief boozy exchange, Selena erroneously spills a smidgen of truth from her life to Martha. After Martha acknowledges her affair with her boss, Selena confesses that her husband is having an affair with their nanny. Immediately upon departing from the train, Selena seems guilty that she might have confided too much information to the other passenger.
Later, when Selena’s nanny goes missing, the police question Selena and her husband, only to yield further complications from her previous loose-tongued confession on the train.
A complex thriller, “Confessions on the 7:45,” ignites a labyrinth of twists and turns and a firestorm of startling admissions that crime fiction enthusiasts will appreciate.
— Thomas Grant Bruso is a Plattsburgh resident who writes fiction and has been an avid reader of genre fiction since he was a kid. Readers and writers are invited to connect and discuss books and writing at www.facebook.com/thomasgrantbruso