Title: Pigeon from Hell
Author: Stephen Graham Jones
In: Black Feathers (Ellen Datlow)
Rating Out of 5: 4.5 (Amazing, but not quite perfect)
My Bookshelves: Crime, Horror
Dates read: 21st March 2019
Pace: Slow
Format: Short story
Publisher: Pegasus Books Ltd.
Year: 2017
5th sentence, 74th page: We were trading babysitting jobs, Kara and me.

Little Ben went missing one day, but his pigeon stayed around… to remind her just what she’d done.

This was a haunting story from the very outset. But, honestly, it wasn’t until the story started to unfold that I truly started to get goosebumps. And feel uncomfortable. This is a very different and… well, haunting tale that I don’t think will be leaving me for a very long time.

Initially I really loved this story. I thought that it was a tale with an observer retelling a tragedy. And a crapped out, musty old pigeon was somehow part of it. But, as it unfolded, I realised more and more that this wasn’t really a bystander telling the story. And that there wasn’t going to be any kind of happily ever after.

This is one of those stories that doesn’t have a happy ending. It doesn’t leave you with happy, glowy feelings. But it does leave you thinking. Which means that while I don’t plan on rereading this tale anytime soon, it certainly was a… not fun, but something like it… kind of read.

<- The Fortune of Sparrows Review

The Secret of Flight Review ->

Image source: Amazon