This book is 76 pages, the last 12 pages of which are dedicated to bibliography. The production is fairly basic, with a front cover featuring a detail from the cover illustration of Aickman's THE RIVER RUNS UPHILL. The book is staple-bound, which unfortunately means that there is no readable spine--hence, the book is not destined for the bookcase.

The book's first chapter, "The Life," runs 20 pages and pulls together a biographical sketch of Aickman, synthesizing threads from such sources as Aickman's THE ATTEMPTED RESCUE and THE RIVER RUNS UPHILL and David Bolton's THE RACE AGAINST TIME : HOW BRITAIN'S WATERWAYS WERE SAVED. For those who have not read these books, this chapter will be especially interesting.

The remaining chapters seem to touch briefly on all of Aickman's published fiction--the two novels and 48 short stories. Crawford is particularly interested in Aickman's aesthetic proximity to surrealism and in Aickman's distinctive gender themes.

Among the portions of the book I found particularly interesting are the helpful bibliography and the personal letters Crawford received from Aickman's acquaintances in the early to mid 1980s, in the years following Aickman's death. Crawford quotes extensively from other sources throughout the book, but twice he shares large portions from these letters. In one instance nearly two pages of the book are given over to a letter from Barbara Balch, Aickman's long-time personal secretary. In another case close to three pages are taken up with an essay-letter from Aickman's friend Valerie Butler. Crawford also draws occasionally from sources as recent as the 2002 memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard, SLIPSTREAM (where Aickman pops up as a former lover of E.J.H.).