The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense [Hardcover]

Starred Review. The words gothic and macabre rather than mystery and suspense might better describe the 10 beautifully told stories in this superb collection from the prolific Oates (The Female of the Species). In the startling opening tale, Hi! Howya Doin!, an overly friendly jogger encounters someone with a less rosy outlook on life. In the horrifying Valentine, July Heat Wave, an estranged wife finds a very unpleasant surprise in the home she once shared with her academic husband. In the haunting Feral, a near-death experience transforms a much-loved only child into something wild and unknowable. The title story concerns a horrific exhibit in the home of an aging coroner in upstate New York (whose behavior is even more troubling). The book's best story, The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza, about an aging boxer in a bout that will make or end his career, happens to be the least gruesome. Powerful narratives, a singular imagination and exquisite prose make this a collection to relish. (Aug.)
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All crime stories implicate the reader in some way--if you weren't thrilled by criminal acts, you wouldn't be reading about them, would you?--but in two of the tales in this new collection, "Hi! Howya Doin!" and "Stripping," Oates takes that concept one step further, implicating the reader by use of second-person point of view. In other stories, guilt shifts more unpredictably: in "Suicide Watch," a father ponders his own culpability for a horrific crime that he thinks--he can't be sure--his son has committed; in "Bad Habits," the children of a serial killer find similarities between themselves and their father's victims; in "Valentine, July Heat Wave," a philosopher plans revenge against his less-intelligent wife, whom he blames for their impending divorce. Oates clearly isn't interested in the usual suspects. It's almost customary, when reviewing her, to get off a crack at her prodigious output. But the care and intellect she applies to all of her projects, even what is theoretically "just" genre fare, are anything but jokes. These stories sizzle, and turning pages only fans the flames. Keir Graff
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In "The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza" a womans world is upended when she learns the brutal truth about a family friends deathand what her father is capable of. Meanwhile, a businessman desperate to find his missing two-year-old grandson in "Suicide Watch" must determine whether the horrifying tale his junky son tells him about the boys whereabouts is a confession or a sick test. In "Valentine, July Heat Wave" a man prepares a gruesome surprise for the wife determined to leave him. And the children of a BTK-style serial killer struggle to decode the patterns behind their fathers seemingly random bad acts, as well as their own, in "Bad Habits." In these and other stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores with bloodcurdling insight the ties that bindor worse. The Museum of Dr. Moses is another chilling masterpiece from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation).

JOYCE CAROL OATES is the recipient of the PEN/ Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the winner of the National Book Award. Among her major works are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls. She lives in New Jersey.

Hi! Howya Doin! Good-looking husky guy, six foot four, in late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male as the initial police report will note, hes as solid-built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete, just perceptibly thickening at the waist, otherwise in terrific condition, like a bronze figure in motion, sinewy arms pumping as he runs, long muscled legs, chiseled-muscled calves, hes hurtling along the moist wood-chip path at the western edge of the university arboretum at approximately 6 p.m. Thursday evening and there comes, from the other direction, a woman jogger on the path, in her late thirties, flushed face, downturned eyes, dark hair threaded with gray like cobwebs, an awkward runner, fleshy lips parted, holds her arms stiff at her sides, in a shrunken pullover shirt with a faded tiger on its front, not large but sizable breasts shaking as she runs, mimicked in the slight shaking of her cheeks, her hips in carrot-colored sweatpants, this is Madeline Hersey, frowning at the wood-chip path before her, Madelines exasperating habit of staring at the ground when she runs, oblivious of the arboretum though at this time in May its dazzling with white dogwood, pink dogwood, vivid yellow forsythia, Madeline is a lab technician at Squibb, lost in a labyrinth of her own tangled thoughts (career, lover, lovers learning-disabled child), startled out of her reverie by the loud aggressive-friendly greeting Hi! Howya doin! flung out at her like a playful slap on the buttocks as the tall husky jogger passes Madeline with the most fleeting of glances, big-toothed bemused smile, and Madeline loses her stride, in a faltering voice Fine, thank you but the other jogger is past, unhearing, and now on the gravel path behind the university hospital, now on the grassy towpath beside the old canal, in the green lushness of University Dells Park where, from late afternoon to dusk, joggers are running singly and in couples, in groups of three or more, track-team runners from the local high school, college students, white-haired older runners both male and female, to these the husky jogger in skintight mustard yellow T-shirt, short navy blue shorts showing his chiseled thigh muscles, size-twelve Nikes, calls out Hi! Howya doin! in a big bland booming voice, Hi! Howya doin! and a flash of big horsey teeth, long pumping legs, pumping arms, its his practice to come up close behind a solitary jogger, a woman maybe, a girl, or an older man, so many older men (forties, fifties, sixties and beyond) in the university community, sometimes a younger guy whos sweated through his clothes, beginning to breathe through his mouth, size-twelve Nikes striking the earth like mallets, Hi! Howya doin! jolting Kyle Lindeman out of dreamy-sexy thoughts, jolting Michelle Rossley out of snarled anxious thoughts, theres Diane Hendricks whod been an athlete in high school, now twenty pounds overweight, divorced, no kid, replaying in her head a quarrel shed h