Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha
Falco's latest short story collection features 16 titles, 2 of them previously published inPlato at Scratch Daniel's and Other Stories(1990) and4 in Acid(1996). As one might surmise from Falco's titles, he is an original and vivid writer. Featuring marginalized, often dysfunctional characters placed in extreme situations, his stories are hard to forget. In "Monsters," friendless 16-year-old Mike Swiggart is suddenly ushered into the crowd of the most popular kid at school, a musician nicknamed Train, who values Mike's writing skills. Invited to Train's custom-built studio for a party, Mike finds himself caught up in a vicious sexual assault on a girl he had always worshipped from afar. In "The Instruments of Peace," anthologized inThe Best Mystery Stories, 2000,an overprotective father is talked into hiring the charming son of a mobster for a summer job and then finds he must deal with an explosive, impossible situation. In this outstanding collection, Falco excels at depicting the darkness that lurks within, yet he addresses this gritty reality with a soaring lyricism.Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved