Poe, Hemingway, Twain, Salinger, O. Henry, and Updike move over, there's clearly a new rival on the block. In his one hundred and twenty three short stories published in six volumes, David Cope has created a new paradigm of the form. The genres he's chosen cover the map-from noir, mystery, and thriller, to science fiction, humor, death, and amnesia-and these stories range in size from a few pages to short novellas. Cope also covers a variety of writing styles, comfortable in all, with first-person narratives, third person fifties' pulp fiction, newspaper factual revelations, and extraordinary allegory, metaphors, and profound observations about the human condition abounding. Without a single exception, I find these stories the perfect antidote to the often-endless drivel of today's thousand-page novels and a once-again peek into the world where every word counts. Five stars. Jon Marshall, Bookworm Magazine