The British author, Graham Greene, dubbed author Patricia Highsmith “the poet of apprehension” in his introduction to her Selected Stories . Highsmith is a one of Mark SaFranko’s favorite authors, and there are haunting echoes of her sensibility in his latest novel One False Step , appearing for the first time in English (previously published in French translation). SaFranko manages to create a world that is cruel and almost claustrophobic, drawing the reader into an unsettling feeling of dread as the protagonist’s life slowly devolves and spirals toward its inevitable conclusion. One False Step is the story of Clay Bowers, a philanderer, whose wandering eye lands him into trouble when, in an instance of darkly humorous irony, he falls off a roof while ogling the lady of the house, rendering him a paraplegic. As he is recovering in the hospital, he realizes that “The thought that he might not be able to do anything (sic)…that he might only be able to lie there and think for the rest o