HOTEL DEATH And Other Tales <i> by John Perreault (Sun & Moon Press: $16.95, cloth; $10.95</i> , <i> paper; 213 pp.) </i>

John Perreault’s stories lead the unsuspecting reader into their maze with a disarmingly familiar tone. The voice of the narrator seems to be explaining his experiences casually, anxious that the reader understand; when he uses an expression like RV, for example, he explains carefully: “recreational vehicle.” The small, unthreatening details pile up in the title story, “Hotel Death,” until we discover that the tour guide who has led us unwary readers south of the border is a thief on the run. Furthermore, he is either hallucinating or a liar who keeps changing his story. The Hotel Descansado--the name means relaxed, which “sounded good,” the narrator told us early on--turns out to be a nude resort. It’s the sort of place where the manager is nowhere to be found, except possibly peering through binoculars toward the place on the beach where the narrator is being held up at gunpoint by banditos as he takes a stroll in the buff.

Some of the stories recall Kafka in their bizarre logic based on absurd premises. “The game was this,” begins “Airport Music,” “never leave an airport except by plane to another airport; never go outside.” The anonymous traveler who adheres to these rules experiences a complete life within the confines of airport corridors and airplane interiors until the day he disembarks and his deepest fears are realized: “There was no covered coupling, no sheltering ramp. The metal stairs at the rear of the jet led directly to the ground and the door to the terminal was almost six ramp-lengths away.” And no matter how seemingly harmless and absurd, Perreault’s hallucinatory worlds, like Kafka’s, take no prisoners: “He made a run for the terminal door. . . . Suddenly he was clear of the airplane and the other passengers, an excellent target. A volley of gunfire coming from the terminal roof felled him in a roar of splintered bone and bursting flesh.” Is this paranoid fantasy or a futuristic world of which we have only an incomplete view? The reader never knows for sure, but Perreault’s vivid tales are compelling.