Simon Strantzas' first collection, Beneath the Surface , marked him as a writer to watch. While some of those stories, to me, mined Ligotti, Lovecraft, and Aickman a bit to much, it was a solid collection from an emerging writer.

With Cold to the Touch, (Tartarus Press, 2009), his second collection, Strantzas finds his true voice and steps away from those earlier influences. Sure, there are hints of Lamsley and Leiber sprinkled throughout, but Strantzas is writing with confidence in clear, elegant prose. There is a certain measured cadence to his style that, like a whirlpool, grabs hold and draws you in.

Cold to the Touch starts with Under the Overpass, a harrowing tale of adolescent ennui mixed with sexual awakening. It is a powerful tale of loss and regret, a perfect tale to open a collection.

The next offering, The Other Village , is a sharply observed tale about two women who take a vacation to a strange island. Their relationship, somewhat strained to begin with, takes an unexpected, and chilling turn. Strantzas' strength is that he writes about everyday people, their hopes, dreams, and failures, with a keen-eyed sensibility, and that strength is very evident here and in the next tale, The Uninvited Guest.

The Uninvited Guest is one of Strantzas' older tales, first published in 2006, but, with its simple premise and strong characterization, it is one of my favourites from this collection. Sometimes, it might be wiser to ignore that knock on the door. To say more would be saying too much.

A Seed on Barren Ground is one of two tales (the other being the titular story Cold to the Touch ) that touches on religious fanaticism. There is more to it than that, of course. Like many of Strantzas' tales, it takes us to places that are at once familiar but also slightly skewed, as if viewed through an occluded and cracked pane of glass. And we go willingly, because a sure hand is guiding us. They plant the seeds in your mind. And if you go looking for salvation, you may not always find it.

Our next stop is Warsaw, where a chance meeting with an old friend makes Nicholas, the protagonist of Writing on the Wall , question everything. And, because Strantzas digs deep into his character's psyche, skilfully rendering believable people without splashy adornments, we believe. This one will have you questioning your life's choices.

Relatively short, but nonetheless still an effective character study; A Chorus of Yesterdays explores how fleeting fame, and perhaps life, really is.

'Time takes everything away; it robs you of everything like a pickpocket-you don't even know what's gone until you need it most. I thought once I could get back what I lost. I tried the impossible. And when I succeeded I only lost it again anyway.'

These are the simple and powerful truths that Strantzas' characters speak.
The Sweetest Song is the longest story in the collection, and the only real misstep. Life holds many enticements, whether it is the allure of sex, or the simple sound of bird song. Or something else entirely. In a sense, without giving too much away, this is a tale of vampirism. But the tale is too long, in my opinion, and would have been improved with some judicious pruning.

Strantzas' past influences are again evident in Pinholes in Black Muslin , but it never resorts to pastiche. Stewart is a lost and empty soul. He's searching for something, anything, to fill his life. And he may have found it in the black and alien northern night sky. The terrors here are cosmic, yes, but all too real. This is homage at its best to past masters.
The monsters in Simon Strantzas' fiction rarely come on stage, and for that, they are all the more terrifying. Consider this, from Fading Light:

The hallway is dark and empty and from the stairs there is the noise of something coming. I don't know what it is, but it casts a shadow, huge and misshapen, that ripples across the wall. That scratching sound follows, amid an awful slurping.

As with the preceding tale, Pinholes in Black Muslin, Fading Light conjures images and ideas of something else lurking out there. And we don't know if this other is malignant or benign. By the time we find out, it might already be too late.

The next three tales; Poor Stephanie, Like Falling Snow, and Here's to the Good Life, are, with minor exceptions, firmly grounded in the here and now, in the mainstream. Poor Stephanie is a short shocker that sneaks up on you, confirming that Strantzas, like all gifted writers, can move you more by saying less.

As a paean to life and death, Like Falling Snow is an exemplary work of fiction. Equal parts melancholy and joy, this is a life-affirming tale of terminal illness and human spirit, which highlights a different, somewhat gentler side to Strantzas' work; a writer stretching and growing. Though I generally dislike any sort of tale told in an epistolary fashion, this one works extremely well.

Ah, Here's to the Good Life. At heart, this is an old-fashioned barroom tale. We've all been there, at a bar, slightly woozy, and as the night wears on your companions and the other patrons start to take on different personalities, different skins, even. There's something slightly off with everyone. Something slightly sinister. Unfortunately, one single line almost mars what is, for the most part, a fine example of a strange tale.

Finally, and all too soon it seems, we have Cold to the Touch . Andrew travels to the Arctic to research an area that is experiencing unusual climate fluctuations. This is perhaps Strantzas' most ambitious tale yet, with a couple different threads running through it. While I bemoaned the fact that The Sweetest Song needed some excising, Cold to the Touch , to me, needed some fleshing out. Make no mistake, this is a very good tale about Gods and men and isolation. But it seems a bit unwieldy, a bit unfinished, and perhaps if we could have had a bit more interplay from the two minor characters, Luis and Akiak, the story's ambitions would have been fully realized. Still, overall, it's a very rewarding read, and a fitting end to an excellent collection.

The physical book itself, like all Tartarus books, is gorgeous -- a beautiful hardcover with dust jacket and silk ribbon. But what makes it truly worth your time and money are the thirteen disquieting and moving tales contained within.
So, Simon Strantzas has now emerged. Say hello to a new and important voice in the canon of weird fiction.