The Devil%E2%80%99s Coattails: More Dispatches from the Dark Frontier

Both the subtitle of the second anthology co-edited by Brock and Nolan (after 2010%E2%80%99s The Bleeding Edge: Dark Barriers, Dark Frontiers) and S.T. Joshi%E2%80%99s somewhat fulsome introduction are misleading, as not all of the 21 contributions from authors such as Ramsey Campbell and Richard Matheson contain much that could be construed as "dark." The overall quality is average at best, negating the hype of the introduction (Joshi describes Sunny K Brock%E2%80%99s "Dying to Forget" as "a textbook example of why weird fiction is necessary," a tale that "could only have succeeded in a literary mode where the constraining rules of mimetic fiction were loosened, if not discarded altogether"). There are some solid, if unspectacular, entries, such as Steve Rasnic Tem%E2%80%99s "Cattiwampus," a conventional but effective "things that go bump in the night" chiller. But Paul J. Salamoff%E2%80%99s "Can You Imagine," a moralizing poem about today%E2%80%99s screen- and digital-obsessed children, is out of place, as is Matheson%E2%80%99s "Interrogation," an extremely short effort without much point. (July)