SUSPENSE THAT DOESN'T SELL OUT: 120 MURDERS edited by NICK MAMATAS

120 Murders edited by Nick Mamatas takes a different tack from the fiction anthologies that serve as musical tributes. Instead of one musician's work influencing each story, it's from the alternative scene. Like the music, the stories are moody, experimental, and operate on the creative edge.

Cara Hoffman's "How Soon" is kicks it all off with the sentence Jack lost an eye the day she landed on the pavement instead of in the pool. We follow how the incident not only transforms Jack, but the narrator who becomes obsessed with her. At a tight six pages it feels like a song about alienation and embracing it.

Two of my favorite authors contribute. William Boyle goes to his classic Brooklyn haunts for a story about a chance meeting of a man, woman, and ax in "Just Like Fire Would". Meg Gardner's salute to the Foo Fighters, "All My LIfe", gives us a black comic romp with a boy, girl, dog, cat, and crypto-currency.

I finally got to sample Silvia Moreno-Garcia, an author I have been meaning to check out. The story, "Superstition." concerns someone hired to handle fetish objects for a special store. The writer examines ideas of belief in a suspenseful and creepy yarn where the devil is in the details.

Maxim Jakubowski wrote one of my personal favorites in the collection, "Love Will Tell Me Apart". It follows the fateful intersection of a stripper and hired killer. It captures the tones of hard boiled fiction as well as alt rock.

Some stories use the music scene as a backdrop. Josh Malerman's "'Hide & Seek" by Swan" examines a father-rockstar relationship. Another's relationship with drugs is chronicled over the years in "The Show Must Go On" by Cyan Katz.

Many reflect the generation that played and listened to it. Brian Francis Slattery's "Never Let Me Down" follows the desperate attempt of some young friends to breakout of their town in the nineties. It may sound like Springsteen but Slattery's style and details bring the Depeche Mode to it. Paul Tremblay lays out the life on a Gen Xer in "Just Do It" that also gives us a funhouse mirror to our times.

Molly Tanzer ties everything together with the last story "The Best In Basement Radio". Taking place on a campus where she was expecting it to be like The Secret History but proved closer to Rules Of Attraction. It captures the music, generational reflection, and attitude in the other stories. She claims the story to be autobiographical. It's definitely personal.

120 Murders gives us twenty-two stories, all ending with authors notes about the song they used for their story. All of the writers capture the spirit of the music with it's left of center looks at outsiders. nick Mamatas acts like your cool friend who handed you that cassette and says, "Check this out."