I read this collection of short fiction by Joel Lane the day after his funeral. I knew Joel slightly and he was a good friend of others I know in Birmingham. His sudden death at fifty was a shock. Joel was starting to make a reputation as a writer of dark fantasy, moving on from his previous work as a poet and a crime writer. His poetry and crime has been published by several good small publishers, this collection coming from the West Midlands’ Nine Arches. Save for the rather utilitarian cover, Do Not Pass Go is a nice pamphlet-with-endpaper production, part of Nine Arches Hotwire series of pamphlet fiction – a series that deserves to succeed.
This collection of five stories is set in the seedy underworld of Birmingham; a place of run-down pubs where one-night-stand pick-ups are best avoided, where blues clubs can give you the blues big time, where builders’ yard tarmac is used other than for road surfacing, where the Gents is awash with drug-dealers and little mercy is given on jobs that could have come from the annals of Murder Inc. And it is always raining. Joel presents the literary equivalent of a what you fear might happen on a late night wait for a long-delayed train on one of the more obscure and badly-lit platforms of Birmingham New Street station.
Nottingham Writers Studio has produced its first sampler – Crime – featuring short fiction by several of its members. The stand-out story is by Alison Moore of Lighthouse fame, much less noir than her usual fare, but a rather tender story which leaves you wanting to know more. It opens in the wake of a minor burglary. As so often with Alison’s stories, her attention to domestic detail creates the atmosphere.
Both collections cost a fiver each.
Ross Bradshaw