Fairytales from the dark side

Short StoriesThe Parker novels, and more recently Bad Men (2003), established John Connolly as a bestselling writer in a hybrid form best described as "gothic crime thriller". The inclusion of a Parker novella, The Reflecting Eye, at the end of Nocturnes suggests a failure of nerve, that someone somewhere didn't trust in the power of the short stories.

The first story, 'The Cancer Cowboy Rides', also jars; a contemporary tale that inverts the generic "loner cowboy cleans up town" scenario, it is set in the US, Connolly's usual stomping ground, and combines crime, horror and deadpan humour ("Nothing sours relations between folk like the dimwit brother of one party coming over all Italian on the upright Baptist mother of the second party"). So far, so familiar.

The 13 stories between these bookends, however, are a different proposition. Most of them are set in England, and usually in the early part of the last century. The tone lies somewhere between Stephen King's conversational style and Poe's more formal precision, but while there are crimes to be solved, and all the stories contain gothic tropes (daemons; witches; nature as an evil neutered by nurture), the title hints at a form older than the crime or gothic genres.

These are fairytales, although they have little in common with the sanitised versions offered by Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. They belong to an earlier age, when such tales were raw in tooth and claw and the Big Bad Wolf was a sexual threat to young innocents.

In 'The Erlking', a forest spirit appears as a cobwebbed form, reeking of "rotting leaves and still, dank water". It is predatory, sexual; the narrator warns children of "a soft, rustling voice, and . . . gifts to trap the unwary, and . . . appetites which are so much worse than anything they can imagine".

Such warnings are repeated throughout, as in 'The New Daughter' (succubae masquerade as subterranean fairies), 'Some Children Wander by Mistake' (malign clowns ensnare a young boy), and 'Miss Froom, Vampire' (genteel spinster vamps on a gullible youth).

Some stories blend knowing humour with gothic symbolism, such as 'The Ritual Bones', set in a boarding school where the teachers are called Lovecraft, Dickens, James and Poe. In this case the story falls flat, but, in 'Miss Froom, Vampire', featherweight comedy results in an unexpectedly charming tale.

All in all, an inventive, intriguing collection.

Declan Burke is a film critic and author. His debut novel, Eight-Ball Boogie, was published by the Sitric Press in 2003

Nocturnes By John Connolly Hodder & Stoughton, 404pp. £14.99