The publication of Falconer, with its shockingly new milieu and its unusually violent language, is only the most dramatic proof that Cheever is not afraid to push off from past accomplishments and to work with previously untried materials. But his whole body of work reveals that he has consistently been willing to grow, to extend the range of his subject matter, and increasingly to complicate his recurring themes. One of his early reviewers worried that the main danger for Cheever might be to find himself trapped within the elegant style of his promising early stories, but Cheever has enlarged and refined that style through four novels and several hundred short stories. No two collections of short stories are the same; some obvious development of theme, tone, or style marks each. Even The Wapshot Scandal, a sequel, goes far beyond the setting and the perspective of The Wapshot Chronicle...