Menagerie

The theme of murder runs through these six tales. In the title story, Josh, an eleven-year-old boy, discovers a notebook in which an anonymous diarist describes his search for his wife's killer. Is it possible that Josh knows the characters depicted - friends of his father's - even though they are bizarrely named after different animals? Similarly intriguing is 'The Distant Shore', in which a hospice nurse hears confessions from not one but two of her patients, and 'The Long Night', about a professional footballer, in bed with his lover, who is startled by the visit of a team-mate... and the lover's husband. The reader is challenged to look away from these exercises in suspense, which are written uniformly with stylishness and skill.