Way Below E

``Did you ever wonder about wrong turns and accidents? Sometimes the best things seem to happen that way,'' observes a character in the final tale of this collection. Murphy's characters often find themselves fighting to make sense of a world full of unexpected mishaps. Life goes sour all too frequently, whether for an elderly widower who falls in love with an obese woman doomed by a brain tumor or a man trapped during a postmodern Second Coming. The author shows occasional great promise and even brilliance, particularly when he goes inside the minds of a murderer as in his poignant disquisition into the mind of a young man who kills his obsessive girlfriend in self-defense and must come to terms with how the world has changed as a result; or in his story about another murderer who struggles to usurp his older brother's girlfriend and place in the world after killing him. More often, however, Murphy's very short stories (some no longer than four pages) need further development, more character definition and motivation, elaboration of plot and scene. These tales are imaginatively built, well-constructed skeletons, but they cry out for more flesh. (Nov.)