High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread
Oates (Evil Eye, 2013) carries forward the great American dark-tales tradition with spellbinding craft, a cutting female eye, and a keen sense of how the diabolical infiltrates everyday existence, masterfully conjuring realms grotesque, erotic, and ironic. She begins with a neatly feinting revenge story about a “conscientious orderly” and a nun who once ran a notorious orphanage. We meet an ethereal, wealthy widow who naively decides that marijuana will ease her pain, a prescription for mayhem. Oates portrays with forensic exactitude misshapen and abused children and a sexist celebrity writer who gets his comeuppance. “The Rescuer” is a complex and haunting tale about family and race centered on a dutiful young woman trying to help her brother in the drug-poisoned heart of Trenton, New Jersey. Oates extends her inquiry into the racial divide and returns to another of her signature settings, Detroit circa 1967, in the exquisitely frank and distressing title story about the fears of a young, white English teacher. Powerhouse Oates brings both exterior and interior worlds into excruciatingly sharp focus, evoking dread, grim exaltation, and the paralysis of prey.               HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Oates’ potent dark tales are addictive, and her readers’ habit must be fed. --Donna Seaman