A Vaudeville of Devils: Seven Moral Tales

"The Dinner Party"

The short story, loosely set in Portugal, is a synthesis between "The Masque of the Red Death", Our Man in Havana, and Shikasta.

First published in TriQuarterly Review, Issue 99 (Spring/Summer 1997).

"The Defenestration of Abu Sid"

A crime, or detective novella about the Washington D.C. public defender Martin Wexler, and his personal growth defending a sociopathic gangster.

"Sunday Evenings at Contessa Pasquali's"

A mystery novella about the expatriate American Billy, who has settled in Naples and the Contessa's Sunday night soirees. "Vedi Napoli e poi muori."

Criticism

New York Times Book Review, 06/27/1999 "[Girardi] writes sensuous prose that unapologetically invokes the supernatural. Although moral in theme, these frank, erotic tales are never moralistic."—Katherine Wolff

"Robert Girardi is the only writer I know of who is working successfully in the neglected tradition of Guy de Maupassant, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allan Poe--with as protean an imagination and as dexterous a pen as any of theirs. You can read these seven moral tales for pure entertainment, then wait to see what else may linger."—Madison Smartt Bell

Times Literary Supplement, 09/10/1999, "A Vaudeville of Devils, a collection of shorter fiction, is preoccupied with darkness and light, appearance and reality. The stories in this volume are richly descriptive, with a whiff of the grotesque and macabre." - Baret Magarian