Collaborations are all the rage, what with the frontier-state of Self-Publishing attracting new citizens every day. It’s a nice, clear-cut strategy – split the work-load and get a few more titles out there. Lest you think I’m belittling the practice, allow me to confess: I have done this myself. The fact is, when collaborations work well and the two writers are compatible and the material is strong, why shouldn’t they be birthed as collaborative titles? Preston and Child, anyone? And, hey, Ellery Queen was really two people, too. While this practice may not count in cases where writers are bipolar, and you probably don’t want collaborations between two bipolar writers, there is really nothing wrong with it – and, indeed, arguably it can only enrich our favorite fields. Not to mention the benefit to both writers of expanded exposure, a widening of the platform. Such publications serve as better than acceptable samplers, too, helping readers determine if they will follow up and order more if what they find is to their liking. Introducing Mean Streets: Tales of Urban Terror, by Gord Rollo and Gene O'Neill.

In the case of O’Neill and Rollo, it works. While on paper (remember paper?) it could be said their styles are divergent enough to question the results, those results are actually rather seamless and the stories read like the work of one person. There’s one qualification covered. Obviously the collaborators work well together, or their experiments would go up in flames. What about the last, the strength of the results? Check!

In the collaborative "Marcela Transmuting," the protagonist survives a brutal attack only to use the trauma to alter her life and seek revenge on those who wronged her. Gene O'Neill's "Chameleon" takes a Kafkaesque turn while following the bland Albert's attempt to literally disappear. An alcoholic, suicidal minister finds that "Divine Intervention" can be a two-way street in Gord Rollo's satirical look at redemption. The two authors combine their talents again in "Lord Rat," continuing the theme of redemption but blending it with a Pied Piper-style fable. The very concise "New Kicks" is O'Neill's ode to alteration again, albeit rather humorously echoing a famous Stephen King story with different motivation, and Rollo's "Moving Pictures" flips the theme and (while recalling an episode of the old TV show Friday the 13th) once again takes self-alteration to its extreme. The collection ends on the more epic "Breath of an Angel/Touch of the Devil," a hefty slice of urban noir fantasy.

While the stories hover around similar themes (alteration, redemption) and one may be able to admit there are no barn-buster tales, the seven included here are solid and entertaining. Marred only slightly by an occasional uninspired word choice or overt narration, these are meaty “idea” stories – meant to shine a weak beam of light onto the secret doings in urban alleys and dark doorways. These events are barely visible to the average person, perhaps glimpsed from the corner of an eye, perhaps only sensed in the shadows. They become a sort of urban magic realism that may well resonate both with enthusiastic urban dwellers and those who remain suspicious of the city and its shadowy environs. Danger may dwell anywhere, but arguably the city and its secrets can elicit the worst in loneliness and fear. Wisely, Rollo and O'Neill make the city and its dark areas a character in their stories. As Kealan Patrick Burke puts it in his introduction, the city is "something to be feared when often it is mistaken as a haven." It is, he continues, "an entity all its own and we are at the mercy of everything it hides." Makes one want to move to the 'burbs. Nicely done blending of genres by two always reliable authors of infinite possibilities and talent.