In this collection of eighteen stories, Hugh Fulham-McQuillan writes
with the playfulness and intelligence of such masters of the short form
as Borges, Poe, and Barthelme. He examines the aesthetics of murder,
the reigning fascination of the macabre in popular culture, and the
tenuous line that separates art from life. One narrator traces the
Möbius strip that encloses the assassination of Julius Caesar,
Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, and the murder of Lincoln by a famous
actor in a theater. Another undergoes plastic surgery to accelerate the
process of his being possessed by the ghost of the Italian composer
Gesualdo. A detective ponders the interest he takes in investigating
murders. Fulham-McQuillan wears his learning lightly and writes with the
tact of a born storyteller.