[Slowly, Slowly in the Wind is] well up to Miss Highsmith's usual standard of nastiness, though perhaps more motley, not so insidiously interlinked as her last collection, the splendid 'Little Tales of Misogyny.' Though her talent for finding fresh horrors, still unspoilt corners of the mind, is exhilarating. Here, one theme that's striking is the furious violence of the meek (senior citizens, suffering wives, violated householders): they were always supposed to inherit the earth, but she's found characteristically ingenious and chilling ways of suggesting how that may come about. Such topical motifs rub shoulders with the classics (the wax museum, the encroaching vegetable) which are equally cleverly twisted, and even a couple of metaphysical/futuristic pieces, which are not. The best story, in some ways, is the oddest, 'The Man who Wrote Books in his Head.' In it she produces a dizzying and very funny illusion within illusion, a casual reminder of the skills behind the blacker magic.