Review: Wonderful Tales in a Fantasttic Collection
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 16, 2011
Pick up this collection of stories now. It's fantastic, varied, hard hitting and at times touching.  Each of these stories takes some part of the movie, Pulp Fiction, as inspiration but the talented authors let their fertile imaginations run. This creates a collection that ranges over the genre of crime fiction while remaining a coherent whole.In Requiem for a Spider, Reed Farrel Coleman gives us the mob. Russians. Gunplay. Backstabbing. A story with so much packed into it. Best thing about it is the wise, but not always informed narrator.  It's that feeling of something not quite right, but that he can't place exactly, that creates the tension that moves the story.In You Never Can Tell, Matthew C. Funk crafts a dirty, sweaty story that oozes with setting, anger, and deceit. Mr. Funk wraps up the tale in slick fashion, giving the reader full knowledge, but never letting his characters off the hook.In his story, Clouds in a Bunker, David Cranmer touches us with a tale about family and the frightening act that is growing old. Of course, it's not heavy handed. It's told through a tense scenario that illustrates rather than educates.In Surf Rider,  Ian Ayris weaves a trippy tale of a burned out icon and two douche bags who think they can make an easy score. I don't want to spoil it, but you can't take something from someone when it's a part of them. Even douche bags should know that.Threshold Woman by Richard Godwin is a dirty and sexual story with a thin veneer that draws you into the heat of the players. The entire story is a mood, a feeling, and as such, though it doesn't resolve, is satisfying.Misirlou by Jimmy Callaway is the shortest novel I have ever read. Each chapter just bursting to action, character and a fair bit of humor. Bronson, Mal and Funk make it all seems to work out. I mean kind of. Sure, not for everyone.That's just a few of the fantastic stories. Grab this and read it. Devour it.