It's the storytelling, stupid.

Some writers like stitching quilts with pretty pretty words, others spin killing stories which consume us.

Lucy Pireel's A Menu of Death is definitely a killing spin of visceral storytelling power on the prowl.

And we are its willing prey.

MoD is the third of LP's published books that I've read.

It comprises eight commute-size short stories with otherly darkness as a unifying theme.

I read them or rather was consumed by them in about three days, during my journeys into and out of London.

I found intelligence, urgency and joy in the writing, although joy might be a strange word to describe stories which revel in the macabre and chilling death.
But there is a joy in LP's writing. I sense she enjoys being in the story, racing along with it, enjoying the hunt as the words do her bidding and form its lithe and active shape. And so it is a pleasure to experience the outcome.

The stance of her stories often challenge the conventional, morally and physically. The variety in her theme is pleasing and you never quiet know what's coming next. You don't learn to write like this on a course. It is in you or it is not.

So MoD?

I was won by an opening poem - by Andy Szpuk - a line of which to me perfectly captures LP's writerly DNA: 'The thorn of a thought delivers poisonous surprises'.
I was in ecstasy when I read that line and in absolutely the right mental state to read MoD.

All eight stories take you outside the norm in some way. You will have to read them to find out how. No spoilers here, my friend.

My personal faves among the stories are CRAVING which I found reminded me in part of Steven Kings way of story writing. Can I say better of that? CRAVING consumes you. And makes you think how we are in our greed for more of everything.

I was also rocked by the chilling logic of BLOODWORK.

And the nightmare hallucinogenic visions in SHORTCUT will disturb anyone who is in training for any kind of running event.

LP does not waste words. All the stories are lean and lithe. And I found myself purring over her opening lines. I suppose opening lines of short stories are very important.

Here are some of the ones that caught my eye and drew me in with their curiosity-igniting immediacy:

-- I've denied it as long as I could
-- When I woke up that last normal morning
-- I stepped out of the doctor's office
-- In her flight from the cruel reality of her life
-- Time. A thing Amy never had enough of

I swear to you it is worth taking time to have a read of LP's shorts. The intelligent reader with a taste for the dark is sure to find something to please in MoD, dripping as it is with phantom maggots of Baudelarian doom.

Ron Askew