A Vaudeville of Devils: 7 Moral Tales is a collection of short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

 and novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s by Robert Girardi

Robert Girardi

Robert Girardi is an American author, writing on the themes of mystery or detective fiction, and religion, like an American Graham Greene, and loser narrator, like Sam Lipsyte....

.

"The Dinner Party"

The short story, loosely set in Portugal, is a synthesis between "The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death

"The Masque of the Red Death", originally published as "The Mask of the Red Death" , is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a...

", Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana

Our Man In Havana is a novel by British author Graham Greene, where he makes fun of intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants....

, and Shikasta

Shikasta

Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta is a 1979 science fiction novel by British Nobel Prize in Literature-winner Doris Lessing, and is the first book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series. It was first published in the United States in October 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in...

.

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

Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

--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