BEFORE I WAKE

Morrell's (Ruler of the Night, 2016, etc.) third collection, largely consisting of works from the past decade, ranges from eerie tales to CIA narratives to stories featuring literary legends.

In "The Companions," one of the stories inspired by events in Morrell's life, a screenwriter and his wife have a series of strange life-changing encounters with a monk and his elderly friend at the Santa Fe opera house. In "Blue Murder," one of three stories featuring Cavanaugh, a top-rated security firm director known as the Protector, a female thriller writer is said to be targeted for the rumored anti-Islamic passages in her forthcoming novel. There are also stories about the torture of a renditioned Iraqi prisoner in Uzbekistan and an infamous battle during World War II pitting two units of the French Foreign Legion—one controlled by the Allies, the other by German-controlled France—against one another. Among the famous authors Morrell imagines are Arthur Conan Doyle, who needs a visit from his creation, Sherlock Holmes, to solve his own painful mysteries, and J.D. Salinger, who, fictionalized as R.J. Wentworth, is pursued by a young editor working for a conglomerate that sees a gold mine—but little else—in the reclusive author's unpublished works. Morrell, who provides personal introductions to each of the stories, openly acknowledges the influences of such writers as Hemingway and Ray Bradbury. Now in his mid-70s, he is old-school in a good way in terms of his craftsmanship and his emphasis on story and character. But by today's standards, his ironic twists can be rather mild or unconvincing. And some of the tales feel dated in other ways.

Readers of a certain age will enjoy these recent stories by the author of First Blood (the novel that inspired the Rambo movies).