Paperback review: Dot Dash, By Jonathan Pinnock

What to do when it's raining ducks, and how to fish for mermaids

Dot Dash is an entertaining collection of grotesque, fantastic, pungent little tales (the dashes are short and the dots ultra-short stories).

Here you can discover why a shower of plastic yellow ducks revolutionised a South American tribe's way of life; how to murder by graffiti; why it's dangerous to fish for mermaids; how to recreate Cairo in your nan's bedroom; and what happens when you get peckish on a voyage through deep space. Many of the tales end in a twist, a pun or a joke, and a fairly high proportion culminate in violent death. Here, to give the flavour, is one of the dots: "Terry peered at the steaming heap of undifferentiated cells and sighed. 'Teleport engineer's arrived,' he announced."