"Strange Weather" by Joe Hill

Year of Publication:  2017
Number of Pages:  432
Genre:  Horror, fantasy, suspense

In the last ten years Joe Hill has established himself as one of the most original and striking writers working in the field of horror and fantasy.  This collects four short novels, written in longhand over a period of four years.  In "Snapshot", a boy and an elderly woman are stalked by a mysterious tattooed thug who owns a Polaroid camera which has the power to steal memories.  In "Loaded" a mall security guard is hailed as a hero for stopping a mass shooting, but a young journalist suspects there is more to the story than meets the eye, and as she investigates the guard begins to find it increasingly difficult to maintain control.  In "Aloft" a young musician attempts skydiving for the first time, only to find himself marooned on a bizarre floating island in the clouds.  An island that seems to have a strange life of it's own.  In the apocalyptic "Rain" a lethal rain of nails spreads across America and the world.

In the afterword to this book, Hill discusses the appeal of the short novel form (the longest story in the book is 140 pages, and the shortest is about 90 pages), describing them as combining the narrative drive of a short story, with the additional character depth of a novel, and tells us that the best are "All killer, no filler".  By and large he is right when it comes to the stories here.  The stories are full of tension and zip along at a good pace.  The characters are well drawn and believable.  Hill has always been very skilled at putting often quite surreal horror elements cheek by jowl with the mundane details of everyday life, making the horror seem almost more bizarre.  There is also a strong vein of humour and social satire here, with "Loaded", in particular, critiquing American gun culture.  "Snapshot" becomes a metaphor for ageing and resultant memory loss, which kind of gives the story a strange feel in it's final pages, and doesn't really fit with the fantasy elements.  However, this is a hugely entertaining , gruesome and funny collection.