Wrong Decisions Lead to Disaster in 'Asking for Trouble'

Review: ASKING FOR TROUBLE (Kindle Edition 2010)
Author: Simon Wood

All it takes is one bad decision to send a person down the wrong path. And, as the introduction to this anthology points out "[n]ot every decision belongs to the criminally minded. Some belong to the ill-informed, the weak and the plain unlucky. In these tales, trouble isn't an indiscriminate force of nature. It's a manmade occurrence that comes when called upon."

As indicated, the people in Simon Wood's ASKING FOR TROUBLE aren't (for the most part) particularly evil. They're under some form of duress or simply duped into thinking they're doing the right thing. Unfortunately, they fail to think their actions through and end up in trouble over their heads.

This collection of ten stories explores just how wrong things can go based on one simple misstep or dark impulse.

The stories include a wide range of protagonists and scenarios, from the beleaguered Richard in "Making Ends Meet," who makes a fateful decision about his mooching in-laws, to the even-more-beleaguered Todd (appearing in a partial reprise of "Fender Bender" from Wood's WORKING STIFFS anthology), who earns a drug kingpin's ire when he leaves a dent in the wrong car.

Wood has an extraordinary talent for ending his stories with a dark twist. He writes clean, vivid prose that not only creates suspense, but paints an entire picture. For instance, in "Big Sky Kill," Wood depicts a barren, snowy landscape across which a man is driving to deliver a ransom for his girlfriend, as follows: "The countryside slipped by. The change was stunning. ... Under the full plate moon and clear skies, a dinner-plate flat landscape stretched beyond the horizon. The fields either side of the two-lane highway would be chest high in crops come summer, but in the dead of winter, they were apocalyptically barren under a blanket of uninterrupted white." With these sentences, Wood clearly conveys a feeling of isolation and almost gives one a chill.

The story twists tend toward noir resolutions, like Richard's unenviable fate in "Making Ends Meet" and the unhappy situation Gill of "For Medicinal Purposes Only" finds herself in after proving the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished.

Despite the bleak and unhappy scenarios depicted, Wood writes with a devilishly clever wit. He employs a dark humor that both underscores the desperation of the characters and leavens the material.

Among the most remarkable aspects of the stories is that the protagonists are essentially so ordinary. They're not evil. They're (by and large) not criminals. They're simply people dealing with difficult situations who've made bad decisions. As a result, these people are doing as the title states.

The basic theme of ASKING FOR TROUBLE would seem to be: don't let this happen to you.