Sunday, June 01, 2025

A Choice of Evils 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: A Choice of Evils
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 343
Words: 134K
Publish: 1983


In March of ‘24, I read “Portraits of Murder”, a large collection of short stories that I assumed would be my last hurrah with the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series. I tried a couple of issues of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, but the less said about that, the better. Portraits was the 28th volume I’d read and I had assumed I had pretty much drained the well dry. Therefore imagine my surprise when I came across a website dedicated to the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” books that listed them all out. Turns out there were at least another 22. So let the screaming recommence!

One thing that I have come to realize about these collections vs the magazine is that I “need” a lot more stories all together than the magazines can provide. Each story is like a little cream puff of villainy and one or even four will just leave you wanting more. You need a surfeit of them, a gluttonous feast that leaves you in a food coma for the next 8-12hrs. THAT is what these collections attempt to do and definitely succeeded here.

With collections like these, I never even attempt to take notes for each story. There are 34 stories here. Can you imagine the size of this review if I tried to write out notes for 34 stories? I could probably do a short story review for the entire month if I reviewed one short story a day. Maybe some month I’ll do that if I don’t feel like reading. I hear that reading slumps still exist in our world, so maybe it will hit me too. You could only be so lucky ;-)

The one story that did really stand out to me was “Knight of the Road” by Thomasina Weber. It’s about a conman who travels up and down the major highways of the East Coast of the US looking for women to bamboozle and steal their money. He gets conned himself and the story ends with him looking forward to meeting that woman again so they can team up. It just had that self-effacing, ironic biting humor that can appeal to me. It was also one of the few stories that didn’t involve murder or violence in one way or another. It was clever.

So Alfie’s back baby and he’s here to stay until you’re sick of him.

*slow clap

★★★★☆


Table of Contents:

The Battered Mailbox by Stanley Cohen

Center of Attention by Dan J. Marlowe

Lesson for a Pro by Stephen Wasylyk

Aftermath of Death by Talmage Powell — AHMM 8(7)

Enough Rope for Two by Clark Howard

A Change for the Better by Arthur Porges

A Killing in the Market by Robert Bloch

Do It Yourself by Charles Mergendahl

Lost and Found by James Michael Ullman — AHMM 18(8)

Passport in Order by Lawrence Block

Moonlight Gardener by Robert L. Fish

Courtesy Call by Sonora Morrow

Restored Evidence by Patrick O'Keeffe

The Standoff by Frank Sisk

A Fine and Private Place by Virginia Long

Dead, You Know by John Lutz — AHMM 13(1)

A Certain Power by Edward D. Hoch

Hunters by Borden Deal

The Driver by William Brittain

Class Reunion by Charles Boeckman

Mean Cop by W. Sherwood Hartman — AHMM 13(11)

Kill, If You Want Me! by Richard Deming

Welcome to My Prison by Jack Ritchie

Come into My Parlor by Gloria Amoury

Lend Me Your Ears by Edward Wellen

Killer Scent by Joe E. Hensley

Dear Corpus Delicti by William Link and Richard Levinson

Knight of the Road by Thomasina Weber — AHMM 8(9)

The Truth that Kills by Donald Olson — AHMM 17(12)

Where is Thy Sting? by John F. Suter

Anatomy of an Anatomy by Donald E. Westlake

Murder Me Twice by Lawrence Treat

Not a Laughing Matter by Evan Hunter

The Graft is Green by Harold Q. Masur




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