His powerful opening tale - The Mansion On The Hill - is a wonderfully evocative discourse by Andrew, an intelligent young man with a business administration degree who through misfortune is forced to don a chicken mask to sell fast food for Hot Bird.

The dialogue, lovingly addressed to his sister, appears at first to be in the form of a letter, but, as the reader continues, it becomes clear that it is an imaginary conversation.

The sister died less than a year before, just before her wedding, and he blames himself because she crashed his car, which had bald tyres. His grief is palpable. Dressed in his mask he comes across a friend with her son and his message of 'white meat breast, eight pieces, just $4.59!' is transformed into 'Death comes to Everybody, Zachary'.

The friend realises his predicament and fixes him up with a job with her cousin.

Thus we are introduced to amber-haired Glenda Manzini, whose brittle face masks an inner sadness as she has yet to find her beau despite being in the wedding and party planning business.

Her antithesis is the big-hearted Linda Pietrzsyk, Andrew's colleague and love interest who dislikes her name and 'was apparently looking for a groom from whom she could borrow a better one'.

Only when the story reaches its beautifully staged and exquisitely paced conclusion does it evolve into a kind of ode that exacts a compelling yet gentle revenge on behalf of his sister, thereby closing a chapter on his grief.

Double Zero is equally enthralling in the way that it combines the uncertain powers of being a psychic with the destructive forces of sibling rivalry.

Years of living in the shadow of the handsome, all-American Jack nurtures resentment in his brother. When Jack comes knocking on the door in search of help, his sibling sends him packing only to regret it when he realises that his psychic powers have failed him. Not all the tales are as refined in their technique or, arguably, are as compelling but they excel in other ways.

Drawer is barely two pages long and is downright bizarre in that the conflict centres on a nondescript piece of reproduction furniture and the secret it holds in its locked, top drawer. One of its owners stubbornly calls it a chest of drawers, while his partner refers to it as an armoire, frustrating the former only because he is not privy to the contents of this forbidden sanctum.

Moody uses an effective device to reflect this exasperation - writing his prose in the third person to project distance, but more intriguingly, without resorting to the use of full stops or indentations. There is the odd exclamation mark but overall the result is a diatribe by a man who feels threatened by giving his lover everything and receiving less than 100 per cent in return.

And so the stories flow with their wit and bleakness until the final one, Demonology, the title story.

It's Halloween and the children are scouring the neighbourhood in search of sweets. The narrator refers to his niece and nephew and their hard-working mother who has known bad times but seems to have found happiness.

There is the trip to McDonald's, the mother allowing the children to eat hamburgers only if they eat salad as well.

There is the church reading from the Book of Revelation that says: 'God would wipe away all the tears from our eyes and there would be no more death.' And, of course, there is the heartbreaking ending - a warming eulogy to those alive and dead, but most of all to those whose lives are spent chasing demons.

Demonology

by Rick Moody

Faber & Faber $170