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Title: Tales of Terror
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 771
Words: 306.5K
| Synopsis: |
From the Inside Cover & TOC
Be afraid—be very afraid: the master of suspense is serving up 58 bloodcurdling tales for your delectation. These suspenseful stories all appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and in the words of Hitch himself, they “are guaranteed to chill and unnerve.” Bill Pronzini contributes “The Arrowmont Prison Riddle,” Margaret B. Maron has “A Very Special Talent,” Barry M. Malzberg offers “A Home Away from Home,” and Patricia Matthews chronicles “The Fall of Dr. Scourby.” Meet a girl who stalks Jack the Ripper, a clairvoyant writer of newspaper obituaries, a homicidal partygoer in a sanatorium, and a police detective who lives vicariously through the exploits of one of his most notorious suspects: they all populate these frightening pages. Caution: not recommended for late-night reading—except for the very brave!
Includes the following 58 stories:
NEDRA TYRE – Killed by Kindness
JOHN F. SUTER – Just a Minor Offense
ROBERT BLOCH – A Home Away from Home
JOSEPH PAYNE BRENNAN – Death of a Derelict
BILL PRONZINI – The Arrowmont Prison Riddle
LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Dettweiler Solution
VINCENT McCONNOR – The Whitechapel Wantons
ISAK ROMUN – Cora’s Raid
NELSON DeMILLE – Life or Breath
WILLIAM BRITTAIN – A Private Little War
JOHN LUTZ – Have You Ever Seen This Woman?
BRIAN GARFIELD – Joe Cutter’s Game
JOHN COYNE – A Cabin in the Woods
EDWARD WELLEN – The Long Arm of El Jefe
JACK RITCHIE – Kid Cardula
JAMES HOLDING – Career Man
LIBBY MacCALL – The Perfidy of Professor Blake
HENRY SLESAR – Sea Change
DONALD OLSON – The Blue Tambourine
WILLIAM P. McGIVERN – Graveyard Shift
BORDEN DEAL – A Bottle of Wine
DONALD HONIG – Man Bites Dog
MICHAEL ZUROY – Never Trust an Ancestor
EDWARD D. HOCH – Another War
ALICE SCANLAN REACH – Sparrow on a String
CLAYTON MATTHEWS – The Missing Tattoo
PATRICIA MATTHEWS – The Fall of Dr. Scourby
STEPHEN WASYLYK – The Loose End
FRANK SISK – That So-Called Laugh
MARGARET B. MARON – A Very Special Talent
BETTY REN WRIGHT – The Joker
HELEN NIELSEN – The Very Hard Sell
RON GOULART – The Tin Ear
CHARLOTTE EDWARDS – The Time Before the Crime
BARRY N. MALZBERG – After the Unfortunate Accident
PATRICK O’KEEFE – The Grateful Thief
TALMAGE POWELL – The Inspiration
ROBERT COLBY – Death Is a Lonely Lover
FLETCHER FLORA – The Witness Was a Lady
PAULINE C. SMITH – Scheme for Destruction
MARY BRAUND – To the Manner Born
RICHARD O. LEWIS – Black Disaster
HAL ELLSON – The Marrow of Justice
IRVING SCHIFFER – Innocent Witness
SAMUEL W. TAYLOR – We’re Really Not That Kind of People
HAROLD Q. MASUR – Pocket Evidence
S. S. RAFFERTY – The Death Desk
AL NUSSBAUM – A Left-Handed Profession
THEODORE MATHIESON – Second Spring
ARTHUR PORGES – Bank Night
BRYCE WALTON – The Contagious Killer
GARY BRANDNER – Bad Actor
MICHAEL BRETT – Free Advice, Incorporated
JAMES M. GILMORE – The Real Criminal
WILLIAM DOLAN – The Hard Sell
BOB BRISTOW – The Prosperous Judds
ROBERT W. ALEXANDER – The Dead Indian
AUGUST DERLETH – The China Cottage
| My Thoughts: |
There is another anthology that was titled the same but was put together directly by Hitchcock and only had 12-14 stories. This was put together by some chick name Eleanor Sullivan. Good for her.
Overall I enjoyed this quite a bit and thought it was on track to be a solid 4star read. I only saw 2 or 3 stories that I’d read in some of his other collections and with 58 stories thought that was pretty good! Then came the last story, a Pons and Parker story. And Bancroft Pons, Solar’s older, smarter and fatter brother is introduced. It was too much. Solar Pons is a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and I think it is terribly done. I wish I had never read any of the Pons and Parker stories by Derleth.
The book’s first story was the perfect opener though. A husband and wife are both having an affair and want to kill off the other because divorce would just destroy the other spouse, who lives and breathes to please the other. No need to be mean, just off them and everyone will be happy. Of course, they end up killing each other and it was PERFECT! It was exactly what I would expect from a story edited by Hitchcock.
The rest of the stories ran the gamut from ok to pretty good with the exception of the last as I mentioned above. This is the 12th Hitchcock anthology I’ve read and I’ve still got 8 more to go. I am loving it!
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