Mike Finn’s Reviews > Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury > Status Update

THE UTTERLY PERFECT MURDER ★★★★

Another muder story that went somewhere unexpected and strange. Perhaps the strangest thing is that it was and was not a murder story. It was about the desire, the need to murder. It gave motive and means and opportunity. But mostly it was about metaphorical time travel. About the mechanics of murdering our past so that we can have a future. I loved it.

SOME LIVE LIKE LAZARUS ★★★★★

A quietly powerful story about a life wasted, held in hiatus by indecision in the face of tyranny. It's a story that made pause and consider how many of us spend at least some of our years living like Lazarus.

Two lines stood out for me:

"There are some questions that should never be asked" and , a little later "Life is questions, not answers".

MARIONETTES, INC ★★★★

The concept of marionettes (exact replicas of a specific person) must have been a fairly novel one when this was written, so I love that the story didn't stop with the concept. It posed the 'What if…?' , gave an answer and then added two separate twists to the tale, both gleefully and skilfully revealed.

THE SMALL ASSASSIN ★★★★

An exploration of postpartum depression as an acuity of observation leading to conclusions no one is going to believe. Wonderfully chilling. The ending made me want to cheer.

THE FRUIT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOWL ★★★★★
I read this story in Bradbury's 'The Golden Apples Of The Sun' collection, sometime in the 1970s, and it's never left me.

It's a perfect portrayal of panic, born out of trauma, turning to an irrepressible mania. Reading this, I can feel the grip of an obsession so powerful that it overwhelms reason and compels action. 

What a wonderfully dark imagination Bradbury had.

THE SMILING PEOPLE ★★

Poaaivly a sign of my jadeed palate, but this didn't habe the shock factor I think it was trying for. I admired how the slow slide from slightly obsessive about silence to total insanity was managed. The atmosphere was creepy moving towards twisted. The tableau at the centre of the story was gruesome but not original enough to b shocking.

This continues from the previous story, now told from the killer's point of view. This is not suspense; it is strangeness on display, asking to be understood but not forgiven. For me, that understanding came with the creepiest line of dialogue in the story, when the killer, hidden by the dark, says:

‘If I told you who I am, you might not be afraid,’ he whispered. ‘I want you to be afraid. Are you afraid?’

THE WHOLE TOWN'S SLEEPING ★★★

Masterful use of suspense. Our heroine is confident and sensible but determined not to be intimidated by a serial killer. Peeking around the edges of that determination is an illicit thrill at the danger. As she walks back alone in the dark, her confidence errodes, delight at anticiated fright replaced by an all-consuming terror. She runs. Will she make it? Did she make it? Suspense!

THE TOWN WHERE NO ONE GOT OFF

This was powerful storytelling. A salesman sontaneously decides to get off a train at small town in the middle of America where no one ever gets off. He steps onto the platform and enters a reality where he feels normal rules don't apply. The sense of menance, real but unnamed, grows as the town descends into darknessl, leading to q bizarre, disturbing, and memorable confrontation,

YESTERDAY I LIVED! ★★★★

Although there's a murder mystery at the heart of this - a murder captured on film no less - what makes it stand out is the rage of the man who is investigating the murder. He's not the homicide detective. He's just the film studio rentacop, but his grief is raw and his anger is lethal. It feels as if he's being haunted by the dead woman.