This is a psychological 'horror' story rather than the supernatural type that makes up the majority of Campbell's work. An ordinary but rather irritating man who continually cracks jokes, suffers misfortune and, due to his obsession with numbers, is drawn into a spiral of criminal behaviour as he tries to head off the bad luck that he believes is due to a chain letter that he sent on - basically, if the recipients failed to act, he thinks bad luck rebounds onto him. It does become fairly repetitive and you also need to allow for the dated setting - video rental shops, old style computers - though he deserves credit for having the protagonist's wife as a self taught IT instructor given the usual stereotype of IT personnel. Not his best sadly. ( )