Minor Works of a Master 
 With so much writing around that is turgid or sloppy, what a pleasure to return to an author who is both lucid and economical! Each one of these ten stories slips down easily, none has more calories than necessary, yet all have character. I would not call any of them major works, even as stories. If 
 Wolf Hall 
 and 
 Bring Up the Bodies 
 are rich banquets, these are tapas, but all the more welcome for it, and as far as possible from fast food. Even the printing promises restrained elegance; this is a slim volume with generous margins, easily digested in a day or two at most. 
 The collection begins as it ends, with a woman unwisely opening her front door to a man she does not know. In the last story, which gives its name to the whole collection, the intruder is an assassin, preparing to carry out what Mantel has admitted was one of her own fantasies when the Iron Lady was in power. In the first story, her caller is a Pakistani salesman in Jeddah. But this is factual; the story, "Sorry to Disturb," was published originally as a memoir from Mantel's four years in Saudi Arabia. 
 Indeed, many of the stories have an autobiographical feel. "Comma," for example, is about growing up in the North Midlands, as Mantel did, and "How Shall I Know You?" follows a writer very much like the author around a dreary series of local book groups and bad hotels. Though there are others, such as "The Long QT" and "Winter Break" that are more like shorter anecdotes with Maupassant-type punchlines. Towards the end, the stories verge on the supernatural, rather as in the author's 
 Beyond Black 
 ; examples are the ending of "The Heart Fails Without Warning," a story about teenage anorexia, and the strangely moving "Terminus," in which the author imagines seeing her dead father on a train going into Waterloo Station. 
 These last few stories gain a gravitas that few of the earlier ones have. But all share the quality of personal truth and that same lucidity of prose. No, these are not important works, three-star subjects at most. But my sheer pleasure in Mantel's writing adds another star without problem.