Ten stories from Joyce Carol Oates equates to 10 opportunities for her to demonstrate yet again how she is literature’s living successor to Edgar Allan Poe. Coming straight off the heels of THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES is an even superior short-story collection tinged with knowing nerve: THE MUSEUM OF DR. MOSES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE.

The title tale comes from THE MUSEUM OF HORRORS anthology from a few years back, and while perhaps the most conventional, it also proves to be one of the most compelling among these pages – a Southern Gothic that happens to take place up north.

Other stories find Oates exercising her experimental side. The brief “Hi! Howya Doin!” – in which a jogger’s run ends not well at all – is essentially one sentence drawn out to six pages. In less skilled hands, such a move would smack of pretension, but in her voice and given the subject, she makes it work for her, to the point where the story might collapse any other way.

Two stories – “Bad Habits” and “Twins: A Mystery,” respectively about the offspring of a serial killer and two brothers headed that way – utilize initials for characters’ names, as if we were perusing a censored police report, minus any other sanitization. About the only stroke of structure-tweaking that doesn’t quite click is “Stripping,” and at barely three pages, there’s hardly room for a narrative ever to take shape.

“Feral” finds the parents of an only child perplexed after a near-fatal swimming accident turns their 6-year-old into a nasty biter, and “The Hunter” follows a young man who has a rather unique – not to mention felonious – method of expressing his love toward the opposite sex. And if “Suicide Watch” would’ve made a killer TWILIGHT ZONE episode, then “Valentine, July Heat Wave” would’ve made an even better EC comic.

Strong as all those are, Oates’ crowning achievement here is the novella-length “The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza.” In it, a woman remembers back to her childhood, when a father’s friend – an underdog of a boxer – dared to take on a champion, yet seemed oddly serene about doing so. The multitude of secrets this story dredges up are heartbreaking, disturbing and, therefore, Oates doing what she does better than anyone else: giving the genres of horror and suspense some well-deserved respectability and class. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE by Joyce Carol Oates