Michael Boyce's Anderson is an original and haunting piece of writing, his second with Pedlar Press. His first novel, Monkey, was also rather original, and quite different from Anderson. Each of these novels is approached by the author as an artistic endeavour.

Anderson does some interesting things as writing. It is, of course, something of an homage to film noire classics, but it also is by comparison rather outside the conventions of the genre. It is in some respects like a highly circumspect David Lynch movie.

It is a more experimental type of writing-more literary, some might say, than most "mystery" novels are. It holds a tension between what is called by the industry 'genre' and 'literary' fiction. Of course these labels and definitions are the currency of the an industry that is changing, challenged by a culture that is naturally more fluid and contradictory in its definitions.

One of the things the writing does to the reader is implicate them into the thinking of the main character, Anderson. This is interesting given that the voice is 3rd person. It manages thus to create the intimacy of first person narrative while maintaining the remote feeling of 3rd person. This simultaneous remoteness and intimacy is consistent with "strange detective" Anderson's relationship to the world, which is always possibly something other than it seems.

A consequence of this implicating quality is that readers speak of how the book lingers with them in unexpected ways. The book's theme is in some respect about mystery itself, or "the strangeness" as Anderson would put it-treating it like it is itself an entity, a being capable of haunting you for good or ill, just as a ghost might.

Although this all sounds rather heady and weird, there are many bits of absurd humour in the book, and the general surreal atmosphere is as playful as it is sometimes terrifyingly bizarre. Plus, it turns out that the strange detective is something of a taoist, so all the time spent in the dark unknown is not without glimpses of a brilliant light.

The publisher and editor, Beth Follett, publishes only a handful of distinct books of poetry and fiction every year, with design work done by Zab Design. From the quality and originality of the writing to the physical look and feel of the book itself, including the image, font and paper stock - Pedlar has a careful relationship with its imprints. Great care is taken with these books and Anderson is no exception.