Book review: Let the Old Dreams Die, By John Ajvide Lindqvist

The Swedish horror writer John Ajvide Lindqvist first became popular in this country when his vampiric fictional debut, Let the Right One In, was made into a cult film by director Tomas Alfredson.

The title story of this new collection is its sequel, following the fates of the 12-year-old Oskar and Eli, his ethereal friend. As ever, Lindqvist's fiction mixes the banal with the demonic.

In one story, a woman finds a dead body and decides to keep it; in another, a man thinks he knows how to cheat death.

The translator, Marlaine Delargy, does justice to the author's spare unfussy prose.