We nicked the title but, monstrous and wonderful though it is, this piece has not much to do with the iconic Charles Laughton/Robert Mitchum film. But we asked the writers for Nights Of The Hunter to give us stories of pursuit or flight, of paranoia or irrational anxiety or fear and – like the movie – plenty of shadows. They didn’t disappoint us.

In 2007, M.J. Hyland adapted a section of her then forthcoming novel This Is How for a short reading on Radio 4 (‘The Big Chill’). Eight years and two National Short Story Award short-listings (2011 & 2012) later, everyone knows what we’d known all along, that as a well a fine novelist she’s a natural and equally fine short story writer.  At The End Of An Unnamed Road is a tale of love turned (very) sour, told in M.J.’s customary uncompromising, steely-eyed manner. Reading, Greg Wise does a great job of seeming almost reasonable and plausible while registering something much, much darker beneath.

There will be more – much more – about Rebecca F. John in the next post. Two years after The Dog Track appeared in ‘The Time Being’, Rebecca has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award earlier this year and last week won the PEN International New Voices Award. If M.J. Hyland’s story is one of pursuit, then Crow Road is definitely a tale of flight, even if crows on Crow Road don’t behave in their usual fashion. When the narrator tries to take a house here, she is warned by everyone that “nothing survives on Crow Road.” Beyond this, I think it’s better that you listen to this dark, strange tale – told beautifully by Laura Rees – rather than read more here. All I will add is that I have taken a house on Crow Road more than once in my life and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Radio newcomer Neil Noon supplies our final tale, Anti-Fan. This is a story of celebrity culture and small-town frustration, of how the one can feed the other and how (understandable) cynicism and distrust can become all-consuming. This is very much a scriptwriter’s short story (unsurprisingly given Neil’s background) and Lloyd Hutchinson inhabits every scene while holding the larger story together superbly, finding all the black humour of this very contemporary tale.

The top/tail/incidental music comes from ‘In The Pines’, performed by British guitarist and folk singer Martin Simpson. Fans of the Leadbelly (and later, Nirvana) classic ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ may recognise it.

Until next time …

Nights Of The Hunter goes out on BBC Radio 4 Sundays 25 October, 1, 8 November 2015 at 7.45 pm.

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photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/35838730@N05/7032269291“>P6210732</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com“>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/“>(license)</a>