These stories demand an attentive reader to take note of Trevor's narrative techniques: precise description, abrupt shifts in scene, and the seamless melding of direct and indirect discourse.

Trevor, with a few brush strokes and the authoritative voice of a seemingly objective narrator, defines physical appearance as a mark of character. Here is the description of the two street punks in "A Bit of Business": "The one who'd given the instruction, the older and taller of the two, was Mangan.

The other was a pock-marked, sallow youth known as Lout Gallagher, the sobriquet an expression of scorn on the part of a Christian Brother ten or so years ago. Mangan had gelled short hair, non-descript as to colour, and small eyes that squinted slightly, and a flat, broad nose." Physically repellent, primitive, but quite ordinary, these two can be expected to act without any moral sense and can...