The Ones That Got Away

There is one vampire and one werewolf in this selection of stories. So Jones is not overly concerned with putting his literary spin on traditional horror motifs. He creates his effects by presenting encounters with the supernatural or with very human evil and then tracing the irrevocable, disastrous effect these encounters produce. His protagonists are often children or adolescents, those who might be most vulnerable in society. The stories are open ended and disturbing, and I confess that a couple were maybe so open-ended that I was not entirely sure what happened. But I was consistently creeped out. There is a down-on-his-luck uncle whose Grateful Dead fandom brings a monster into the life of his young nephew. Hapless high school kids get in over their heads with the drug dealer that thought was their cool new friend. Two valley girls learn that it hurts to be pretty in the most horrible way imaginable.

I have read a couple of books by Jones, but this is the first that made me see what all the fuss is about among his fans.