Beads of Blood: and Other Stories

What is the human condition if not a foetid tangle of greed, savagery, prurience and blackest farce? Are you God’s gift to women? Could you survive, alone and without food, on a crippled yacht? How’re you fixed for domestic abuse? Something you can handle? Can you be certain your wife has really been faithful to you? Would thoughts of revenge help you cope with a horrific rape administered by your peers? Will you pay the moral price for a personal history of bank robberies and the random scalping and murder of innocents? Do you keep a diary of your devoted mother’s sinister behaviour? Might the prospect of marriage and money persuade you into a life of serial murder? What if your family and business are threatened by protection racketeers? And might there be the smallest glimmer of light at the end of this long dark tunnel? Not for the faint hearted, or easily offended, these ten stories are exhibitions of humankind in all its frail and frequently futile attempts to overcome, or else come to terms with, its overwhelming deficiencies. Don’t say you’ve not been warned.

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