The Return of Count Electric, and Other Stories

Offbeat plots and characterizations strengthen a collection of 11 tales featuring the usual bunch of loners, sociopaths and psychotics who have spread hints of menace and violence through countless modern short stories. Spencer ( Maybe I'll Call Anna ) adroitly mixes humor with the macabre to intensify the horror in pieces like the title story, which chronicles the re-emergence of the narrator's psychotic alter-ego, who electrocutes his victims. Black humor also comes into play in ``The Wedding Photographer in Crisis,'' whose protagonist forces the groom to go through with the ceremony at gunpoint, and in ``Haunted by the Horror King,'' which shows a writer driven to madness by the success of Stephen King. Spencer likes to give a nod to other writers: ``Snow'' is a modern version of Somerset Maugham's ``Rain;'' the eerie ``A Child's Christmas in Florida'' is like nothing Dylan Thomas would have imagined. ``Looking Out for Eleanor,'' the collection's best story, takes a noirish journey through Texas and Florida as two narrators strive to protect the childish, amoral title character. In style and content, these tales hark back to such recently rediscovered '50s existentialist classics as Charles Willeford's Miami Blues . (Sept.)