Familiar but Different

Wayne Grady makes no bones about his literary inheritance. Each of the eight “cover stories” in The Cartel reconceives a canonical work in a more or less contemporary vein. Appended to every adaptation is a brief essay in which Grady dutifully acknowledges his source material, supplying readers with insights into his artistic aims.

Certainly the short story lends itself well to interpretive manipulation. Swap a setting, compress an ending, reorient a quarrel from an undersung point of view: et voilà! Grady isn’t the first to rejig a Nikolai Gogol. What sets this collection apart is its generous versatility, the cumulative fusion of fiction and gloss.

“La Gordita,” the first and longest entry, recasts Guy de Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif” in Mexico. As drug cartels descend upon the city of Colima, six American and British expats charter a private bus to Manzanillo, where they plan to fly back to the United States. Accompanying them are two...