Is there a single genre Ed Gorman doesn’t write in, and excel in at that? I’d guess maybe lesbian horse stories, but something tells me he’d prove me wrong.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEAD AND OTHER TALES is not the definitive Gorman collection, but it does present 15 of some of his best suspense shockers, spanning nearly three decades of a productive career. Though they dip their toes into a variety of genres – mystery, horror, sci-fi, Westerns – the stories share the man’s masterly touch in short fiction.

A jack of all trades, Gorman is primarily known for mysteries, and the book starts off with “Muse” and “Riff,” a pair of music-related pieces that hit the classic themes of murder, revenge and spurned love. Ill-fated affairs of the heart also figure in strongly with the next batch, from the cybersex future of “Lover Boy” to “The Brasher Girl.” This latter piece – nearly a novella – I originally encountered in Byron Preiss’ THE ULTIMATE ALIEN anthology a few years back, and it remains among the very best stories I’ve read within that time period. It’s about a young man who falls in love with a beautiful but disturbed girl, thinking with his nether regions instead of his brain, leading him down a deadly and most unexpected path. Even though I’d read it before, I was hooked all over again.

“Yesterday’s Dreams” is another lengthy but totally riveting entry, concerning a former cop’s search for a blind woman who reportedly harbors the power to heal with her touch. Similarly, “The Long Sunset” deals with a strung-out girl’s ability to get those in her presence high on sheer bliss, which they find addictive. Most authors would be content merely dealing with the themes of the fantastic, but Gorman makes the stories stick by injecting them with naked, honest emotions, lifting them up onto an entirely different plane.

The oldest story in the book, 1968’s “Second Most Popular” is a brief morality tale in the realm of high-school sexual politics, while “Survival” – which I first read in F. Paul Wilson’s excellent medical-thriller anthology DIAGNOSIS: TERMINAL – shows the author can tackle speculative fiction with the best of them. But what most people don’t know – myself included, until now – is how skilled Gorman is at the Western. There are three such pieces in the book, and – “Brasher” aside – the eye-opening highlights.

Hear the word “Western” and you likely think of the tired, old showdown plot – one so overused in movies, TV and print that it helped kill the genre. But Gorman does something interesting and very different with each of the three tales. “Deathman” is a moody, introspective look into the dark psyche of a for-hire hangman, and “Emma Baxter’s Boy” proves the Western backdrop is as good as any for horrific suspense. But “Junior” is the most surprising – nearly a screwball comedy with an EC Comics-style ending that had me smiling.

Actually, I could say the same for most of this outstanding collection. Not everyone can write a short story well, but there are a few authors who seem to relish the challenge and rise to it every time: David Morrell, Jeffery Deaver, F. Paul Wilson, Lawrence Block and, yes, Ed Gorman. All the proof you need is here, but you’ll want to seek out more anyway. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING DETECTIVE AND 19 OF THE YEAR’S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES edited by by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg
• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK TWO – CITY OF NIGHT by Dean Koontz and Ed Gorman
• GHOST TOWN by Ed Gorman