Radgepacket: Tales from the Inner Cities, Vol. Four has a slightly different lay-out from its increasingly solid predecessors. The interviews and the competitions, excellent though they were, are gone, to be replaced with even more stories of 'madness and mayhem from the Inner Cities'. Twenty-two stories, in fact, including contributions from established, hard-hitting novelists, Danny King and Ray Banks, blogster extrordinairand and cult short-story writer, Paul D. Brazil, and exciting up and coming authors, Andy Rivers and Tom Arnold. Add to this new and old faces from the ranks of the 'unsigned and the unhinged' and what you have is a gritty short-story collection that is in turns disturbing and hilarious.
From Ragna Brent's opener, 'Piano Man' - a comic tale of a man killed by a falling piano, through to Stephen Cooper's brilliant story about a contemplative sniper, every single story has something to offer. My personal favourites, apart from those by all the author's mentioned, and almost every story is worthy of praise, were Ray Banks hilarious 'Deacon Shuffle', Darren Sant's 'Ungrateful Dead', and the story by Gareth J. Mews about a man whose head has fallen off.
Irreverant, hilarious, disturbing. Fantastic. Radgepacket 4 : the best Radge yet.