Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Vol 1 ★★★☆☆

 

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Title: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Vol 1
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 163
Words: 58K

Synopsis:

From the Inside Cover & TOC

WHO’S THAT PEEKING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE?

Is it a nasty voyeur, looking for illicit views of depraved sensuality?

Is it a special agent of the CIA hunting for a sinister enemy operative?

Is it some tabloid snoop trying to uncover new Washington scandals?

No, Dear Reader, it’s you—squinting with delicious dread at the houseful of horrors that Alfred Hitchcock has designed for your shivery delight. It’s a nice place to look at—from a safe distance. But you wouldn’t want to die there.

Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked

Fourteen skeletons in the closet

HITCHCOCK HAS YOU WHERE HE WANTS YOU.

You’ve drawn the blinds against the night. You’ve taken the phone off the hook. You’ve double-locked every door. But if you think you are safe, you’re dead wrong. There’s no escape once you open this book, and let loose the evil which Alfred Hitchcock has personally packed inside. Here are the most fearsome visitors ever to destroy your defenses and haunt your imagination—in two nerve-twisting novelettes and twelve terror tales.

Table of Contents

Introduction

STORIES

Hijack • Robert L. Fish

Tomorrow. . .and Tomorrow • Adobe James

Funeral in Another Town • Jerry Jacobson

A Case for Quiet • William Jeffrey

A Good Head for Murder • Charles W. Runyon

The Invisible Cat • Betty Ren Wright

NOVELETTE

Royal Jelly • Roald Dahl

STORIES

Light Verse • Isaac Asimov

The Distributor • Richard Matheson

How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies’ Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue • John Keefauver

The Leak • Jacques Futrelle

All the Sounds of Fear • Harlan Ellison

Little Foxes Sleep Warm • Waldo Carlton Wright

NOVELETTE

The Graft Is Green • Harold Q. Masur

My Thoughts:

Ok, so, this volume. This was weird and creepy and not in a deliciously fun and awesome way, but in a dark and uncomfortable way. Reading the cover blurb makes it pretty evident that is exactly what Hitchcock was going for. I didn't care for it.

Part of it was that the stories were all over the place. You have science fiction with Asimov's selection (which I had read before several times and so skipped) to body horror of a sorts with Wright's Little Foxes Sleep Warm to just downright psychotic losers in Jacobson's Funeral in Another Town to the utterly hilarious entry by Keefauver about how the hippies plot to take over America was foiled. It felt like the stories were in a bag that Hitchcock reached into and selected at random. So far most of these anthologies have been pretty “on topic” with the title and were thematically linked, albeit sometimes very roughly.

The Distributor by Matheson was probably the most disturbing, as the main character, while human in appearance, seems to be more of a devil set on destroying communities one by one. It was all about killing, lying and destroying. It was not pleasant or enjoyable.

Not the worst collection that I've read in this “series” but not one that I'd recommend as a starting place.

★★★☆☆

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews