True terror exists in the corner of your mind, in the shadows – always behind you, but never in front. After all, what’s more frightening: the plane crashing down or the dread that it actually could? H.P Lovecraft was the master at this, albeit driven by his own neuroses. His mom dressed him as a little girl for several years and his father was bughouse nuts. Fortunately, we are all the better for it.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I had never heard of Laird Barron before reading his excellent collection THE IMAGO SEQUENCE AND OTHER STORIES. If you’re looking for an heir to the Lovecraft legacy, Barron holds the title. I’m guessing you won’t be able to read any review about Laird without also coming upon the word Lovecraft. And that is awesome.

Barron’s a creature of the present day. He’s witnessed serial killers, death camps and terrorist attacks. These are incidents of which Lovecraft couldn’t conceive. Barron gives the weirdo tales of Lovecraft a modern twist; there are no Victorian heroes or antiquarian prose – arguably the main drawback to Lovecraft’s visions. Barron’s heroes are morally bankrupt, and after their encounter with unspeakable evil, they’ll wind up spiritually bankrupt as well. His protagonists are tough guys and losers – the kind of bad men who always have cash, but ain’t ever gonna get credit. And in IMAGO, they get all the justice they deserve.

The first tale, “Old Virginia,” features an over-the-hill CIA agent recruited for that one last mission, babysitting an evil, ancient man. It sets the tone nicely for the dark stories that follow. At times, IMAGO felt as if it were all one story, with madness and evil as its unifying theme. But I’m probably reading too much into it.

Second on the list is the superbly creepy “Shiva, Open Your Eye,” about a shifty private eye trying to uncover a series of strange disappearances. It leads him to a kindly old woman – and the bones she’s been wearing since man crawled out of the sea. “Procession of the Black Sloth” is one of the longer stories, regarding an industrial spy in exotic Hong Kong. More visceral than visual, this is the literary equivalent to the current influx of Japanese horror flicks.

In “Proboscis,” a failed actor who hooks up with a pair of drug-addled bounty hunters makes a stand against a hellspawn who might already have taken over the world. “Parallax” is the most dense – the story of an artist who may have killed his wife. A nice little mystery, the end will leave you rereading.

As for the title work, it’s a tale about a collector, only he’s in possession of something not from this earth. Of them all, “Bulldozer” is the most interesting of the bunch, featuring a rundown Pinkerton shooter chasing a circus strongman who ran off with P.T. Barnum’s collection of dark oddities. The dismal setting, colorful prose and world-weary characters combine for a great tale of a man who knows all hell’s a-coming – and there’s no reason to get out of the way. –Matt Adder

Buy it at Amazon.