To quote Edgar Allan Poe: "And all my days are trances, and all my nightly dreams are where thy dark eye glances, and where thy footstep gleams..." No other quote could better apply to David Niall Wilson's collection, The Devil's in the Flaws (Macabre Ink, 2023).
I've read a lot of Wilson's work over the years, and I published several of his stories in Deathrealm magazine back in the day — not to mention one of his more recent tales in my anthology, Deathrealm: Spirits (Shortwave Publishing, 2023). From the first of his stories that I read, back in the 1980s, I credited him as an accomplished stylist.
The Devil's in the Flaws proves that his style has aged like a fine wine (although I know the author is partial to bourbon). His prose is elegant, lyrical, masterful. While he has penned stories and novels in various subcategories of speculative fiction — horror, fantasy (everything from urban to sword & sorcery), science fiction, and thriller — the twenty short tales and one novella in this collection are primarily of a quiet, contemplative, introverted sort, more akin to the work of Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and perhaps Caitlin Kiernan than Stephen King or Paul Tremblay or Bridgette Nelson or any number of contemporary "horrific" voices. There is a wee bit of Lovecraftian influence for good measure.
Author/editor Richard Chizmar, who provided the foreword, wrote that, having been captivated by the work, he devoured The Devil's in the Flaws in a single sitting. I read the first few tales from the hardback edition of this book, but I absorbed most of it by way of the audiobook, read by the incomparable Joshua Saxon, whose polished, expert delivery could hardly have been more perfect for this collection's overall tone.
Now, many, if not most, of these stories are contemplative, dreamlike, trance-like, eschewing kinetic character conflict and/or action in the customary sense. Many of the tales focus on a single character's point of view and brim with vivid descriptions of physical or emotional stimuli, particularly those triggered by music or intoxicating compounds — or both — perhaps most notably in the story "Milk of Paradise." Traumatic memories often play a driving role. Of the short tales, "Little Ghosts," "Interred," and "Fear of Flying" are the standouts for me, with truly haunting imagery and vivid, sensual prose. "Wayne's World," dedicated to our mutual friend and fellow author, Wayne Allen Sallee, offers a powerful perspective on serial killer John Wayne Gacy, with whom Sallee once shared some correspondence. I suspect Wilson's take on Gacy's horrific soul might bring a big smile to Mr. Sallee's face.
For me, the crowning work in this volume is the title novella. Here, Wilson's style shines. The well-drawn characters, snappy dialogue, sense of otherworldly mystery, and an almost Lovecraftian menace — combined with a smidgen of whimsy — make this one of my favorite works by David Niall Wilson. Not that I could have ever published a piece this long in Deathrealm, but the novella is, at its heart, the consummate Deathrealm story. It is, as they say, worth the full price of admission.
The Devil's in the Flaws as a collection strikes me, at times, as too internalized, surreal, and trance-like, and I wonder if re-ordering some of the tales might bring a more balanced ebb and flow to the pacing. Regardless, the title story as the collection's finale packs such a lovely wallop that, whatever the sequencing of the other tales, it will leave you staggered — in the best possible sense.
Four out of five Damned Rodan's Dirty Firetinis.
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