FRESH BLOOD

A barbaric yawp from the other side of the pond, these 14 noirish entries are a collective manifesto from a new generation of angry young men (and two women, Stella Duffy and Denise Danks) whose genealogy Ripley's Foreword traces to back to 198890. The stories—unrelentingly, often gleefully sordid tales by the likes of Ian Rankin and Graeme Gordon, Mark Timlin, and Chaz Brenchley- -are all new, except for hitherto five-year-old work by Russell James and editor Ripley. The title of Jakubowski's ``Blood and Guts, Goodge Street'' neatly sets the sociological, in-your-face tone of the whole collection, accentuated by self-serious headnotes by the authors. The highlight, John Harvey's ``She Rote,'' is the only tale likely to be familiar to American readers already; you can pick your own lowlight. A brilliantly dreary collection of punks and grifters, whose attitude, like their chroniclers', is out to here.