SOURCE: Ferguson, Otis. “Collected Waxworks.” New Republic 104, no. 1366 (3 February 1941): 155.

In the following review, Ferguson finds the stories in Presenting Moonshine enjoyable but superficial.

John Collier in his short stories has opened up a vein of fiction that comes strangely in this time. All his pieces [in Presenting Moonshine] are in this same manner—which is not, incidentally, the more humane and engaging manner of the two novels: His Monkey Wife and Defy the Foul Fiend. They are matter-of-fact in tone, smoothly joined in the writing, and deal in one way or another with the supernatural. I don't like them. They are clever and at times brilliant; they start where Poe leaves off, without ever quite achieving the memorable effect of the occasional Poe success. It is perhaps wrong to speak of them as being in any vein, for there is no blood in them; they are about everyday...