Midnight Tableau by Michael McCrann Search Amazon for other books by or about Michael McCrann. Rating: Reviewed by: Mario Guslandi

It's always a pleasant discovery to find a new author able to write dark fiction in an appealing way, to deal with horrific themes without resorting to gore and carnage, to unnerve the readers without disgusting them with grand-guignolesque scenarios. Michael McCrann is such an author and this is his first, excellent collection of short stories.

The opening tale , "Lured," had already attracted my attention when it previously appeared in the anthology Dark Lurkers, as a tense, breathtaking story about a dangerous, tragic diving trip to explore the ghostly secrets of a sunken ship.

In "La Arana afortunada", a story masterly told, a girl unable to leave a bathroom because of the presence of a black tarantula experiences sheer terror, followed by relief and hope for a better life. "What needs doing will get done" is a cruel tale where a loving father finds a peculiar way to cure his little boy of his strange ailment. "Forever Isabella" is an entertaining piece of fiction with a moral ,on how a love potion's effects turn out to be a blessing and a curse at the same time. In the creepy "Down the cellar" a little boy, trapped in a dark cellar with a hungry creature, has to face a nightmarish adventure of loneliness and terror. "The pledge" effectively and humorously portraits the misadventures of a loser trying to be admitted to a student confraternity. "The lizard's tail" is another superlative tale, narrated with a polished writing style, where a deed of the past spoils the quiet, otherwise happy life of a retiree in Florida. In the gentle and sad "Close your eyes" a black prostitute gets haunted by the ghost of an eight-year old little girl trying to make contact with her for reasons not immediately understandable.

The final piece, "Coven of the unwanted", is a novella of witchcraft and loneliness taking place in an institution for juvenile delinquents. Hell gets loose with the arrival of a new inmate, a girl abused by her father and left with a disfigured face. Due to the length of the story, the pathos can't obviously last throughout the narration, so here and there a slight sense of boredom peeps in, but the final confrontation – even if somehow predictable- is an explosion of terror. Which confirms that McCrann, although clearly more at ease with short fiction, is a tremendous storyteller.