TL;DR: It’s good. If you like weird fiction and want to try Aickman, this is as good as any other place to start.

More details:

This collection brings together previously uncollected works, mostly left over from the Faber & Faber reprints from a few years back. As such they might not be the best stories with which to first encounter Aickman. But as a noted author of weird stories maybe there’s no best way to encounter his work except with some hope that you’re getting one of the good ones. This collection certainly delivers a number of those.

At his best, Aickman sits firmly among post-war suspense writers like Patricia Highsmith or Roald Dahl. You can certainly imagine them as Hitchcock productions. Somewhat cruel and murky, with a current of sex bubbling under the lid, some of the stories also call back to Machen and Blackwood. Those stories present other worlds that intersect with our own and cause all manner of bad times for those people unlucky enough to get caught in them.

Instead of giving detailed accounts of each story, I’ve grouped them according to non-exhaustive nor categorically exclusive vibes.

“Alfred Hitchcock was here”
Compulsory Games
Marriage
Residents Only
Letters to the Postman

“Algernon Blackwood was here”
Hand in Glove
Le Miroir
No Time Is Passing
Raising the Wind
The Strangers

“Death is a Lady (and kind of hot)”
Laura
The Fully-Conducted Tour

“Meh”
Wood
The Coffin House
A Disciple of Plato

Aickman’s also a guy who heard Chekhov’s advice to cut the first three pages from any story and said, “To hell with you, Anton. Those three pages are now five.” He’s not a writer to get to the point any time before he well wants to. He’s a very sorry not sorry sort of writer.

And honestly, I kind of like that.