Paperback review: Dot Dash, By Jonathan Pinnock

What to do when it's raining ducks, and how to fish for mermaids

Brandon Robshaw
Sunday 20 January 2013 01:00 GMT
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Dot Dash is an entertaining collection of grotesque, fantastic, pungent little tales (the dashes are short and the dots ultra-short stories).

Here you can discover why a shower of plastic yellow ducks revolutionised a South American tribe's way of life; how to murder by graffiti; why it's dangerous to fish for mermaids; how to recreate Cairo in your nan's bedroom; and what happens when you get peckish on a voyage through deep space. Many of the tales end in a twist, a pun or a joke, and a fairly high proportion culminate in violent death. Here, to give the flavour, is one of the dots: "Terry peered at the steaming heap of undifferentiated cells and sighed. 'Teleport engineer's arrived,' he announced."

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