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Christopher Golden's fiction is hard to label. Basically a horror writer, he is actually, as shown in this short story collection, a very eclectic author. The present volume assembles eighteen tales quite various in genre, content and style. For instance there are: a historical piece ("One"), a vampire story full of graphic violence ("Venus and Mars"), a yarn in the shape of a comic book story ("Lament for Gunwitch"), a funny tale about the human race going crazy ("The Urge"), and a horrific novella running on the edge of plausibility, where a monster destroys the peace of a small sea town ("The Shell Collector").

Not everything in the book is top notch and not everything appeals to me. Golden, however, is a fine writer whose work is never boring, always well written, constantly entertaining. And some stories are quite remarkable, such as the superb "The Art of the Deal," where tattoos become a living art or "The Last Straw," where the supernatural element (the ghost of a former wife) is simply the frame for the compelling portrait of a man on his downfall.

"The Nuckelavee," co-written with Mike Mignola, is an excellent Hellboy story featuring an old guy doomed to pay his dues to his defunct brother, while the title story "The Secret Back of Things" is a puzzling piece hinting more than telling and leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. In the vivid and fascinating "Burning Questions," a monster teenager comes back home to fix a couple of injustices suffered during his childhood.

How unhappy being a kid can be is a theme effectively addressed also in the captivating "Pa-Kow," starting out as a kind of Twilight Zone tale, but then developing into a great story well rooted in reality, depicting the cruelty and the cowardice of some young lads towards schoolmates suddenly singled out as outcasts.

If you have never encountered Golden's fiction before, I strongly suggest you should give it a try.

Mario Guslandi lives in Milan, Italy, and is a long-time fan of dark fiction. His book reviews have appeared on a number of genre websites such as The Alien Online, Infinity Plus, Necropsy, The Agony Column and Horrorwold.