Robert Aickman's Painted Devils is another excellent anthology of strange stories in the author's inimitable style of slowly encroaching eeriness... Metaphorically, it's as if you're wading comfortably care-free in ankle-deep water, and before you realize it you're up to your neck in a roiling river. This collection contains one of Aickman's very best, "Ringing the Changes", wherein a honeymooning couple in a small seaside village are suprised to find that the local church bells are pealing incessantly. Other favorites here include "The School Friend", "The Waiting Room", and "Marriage".

Aickman is a master storyteller with a sly wit and an ability to craft memorable passages of insight and detail. For example: concerning interpersonal relationships: "... associations that are not alive are best amputated as skillfully as possible before the rot infects too much of one's tissue and unnecessarily lowers the tone of life.", and "There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward."

I will also note that this collection includes perhaps the only Aickman story of the few dozen I've read so far that did not really intrigue me. "My Poor Friend" is a rather bland tale which draws on the author's interest in Britain's waterways (he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association), skewers the conventions and machinations of Parliamentary government, but ultimately offers little of his signature strangeness. ( )

Aickman's stories don't jump out from behind a gravestone and yell "boo" at you. They creep up on you, perhaps on the second reading, and reveal their true sinister nature. I think it's about time for me to read them again! ( )

Awesome... ( )