Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings by Jez Burrows

Harper Perennial, 256 pages, $16.99

What would it be like to quit your day job and spend the next year browsing dictionaries, copying example sentences, then prodding them together to form short — very short — stories? Jez Burrows knows. His book includes some very intense stories, comic, tragic, or simply contemplative.

And, yes, most emphatically, this belongs in the mystery category. Many of his angsty productions feature murder, suicide, despair, acidulous remarks, and other criminous or unkind acts.

For example:

Deception: Curtains 

The double life of a freelance secret agent? My nerves are shot. This is all getting too deep for me. At about ten at night, I got a call. A cold, dead voice. He told me my telephones were tapped and I was being watched — they see me as a traitor, a sellout to the enemy. 

I never thought Stash would rat on me. Times have changed. He had seen which way the wind was blowing. How cold and calculating he was. Little did he know what wheels he was putting into motion.

The underscored words are the ones defined by the sentence or phrase in the dictionary. Burrows took a few liberties with tenses, people’s names, and conjunctions. Otherwise, it was fair play. The works are alphabetized, of course, by category and often sub-title.

Two hundred and fifty-six pages of richness and delight.