Longer isn't necessarily better, as this debut collection of short stories vividly demonstrates.

Loosely linked by a man’s conviction for the murder of a number of prostitutes, Lee's stories all have a dark undercurrent of despondency running through them: the fumblings of teenage sex; recreational drug use gone wrong; fractured relationships between parents and siblings; the slow pain of love affairs breaking down; and the chronic ache of the loss of a dead child.

There is some tenderness in these stories as well (a tattoo artist takes in a homeless woman who has been sheltering from the rain in his doorway; a daughter moves towards reconciliation with her dying father), and a running theme about jokes (for which Lee never provides the punchlines), but on the whole, this is pretty bleak stuff.

The stories are, however, brilliantly written. Lee has the gift of grabbing the reader with unassuming first lines that initially seem banal and almost irrelevant, but immediately arouse the curiosity: 'That boy works as a photographer for the Associated Press'; 'Sally’s eyes have recently required glasses'; 'You are addicted to television news'; 'Jess holds her lipstick like a crayon'.

Lee alters the perspective from which some of these stories are read, jolting us out of our complacent acceptance of the traditonal third- or first-person narrative, thereby providing each slice of life she describes with an immediacy that shocks.

It is common to say that the best short story writers never waste a word, whittling their tales down to the essence of what is important, but this seems to me to be a great compliment and one that Nancy Lee wholeheartedly deserves.

Reviewed by James Smith, Story website editor.

Dead Girls is published by Faber

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