14 of My Favorites in Suspense 2.5Stars

 

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Title: 14 of My Favorites in Suspense
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 181
Words: 71K
Publish: 1959

I’ve noted this on multiple other Alfred Hitchcock Presents collections, but sometimes they just rub me the wrong way. It’s like the writers are almost gleeful in how they are writing about about madness and murder and mayhem. I do not like that. The problem is that I can’t tell if it is actually the authors or just because of a mood that I’m in and not truly aware of.

I didn’t dislike this collection but I was glad to see the end of it. In the table of contents there are little blurbs for each story with spoilers galore. I’m not particularly worried as I doubt a single one of you will read this book, but just in case, do be aware. The other thing that might happen is that I win a big lottery, become super rich and famous and so some lowlife sues me because I spoiled this book for him. So I’m heading that problem off at the pass! (besides the obvious one, you know, of not buying a lottery ticket in the first place) (except on blogger, so total spoilers here)

★★✬☆☆

Blurb & Table of Contents & Synopses:

Sardonic Shockers

Selected by

Alfred Hitchcock. . .

The not so gentle man who knows all the angles (especially the sharp ones) and all the ropes (the hanging kind). From his deep-freeze of ingenious chillers incredible only to the unimaginative and horrifyingly real to the shrewd and daring—the following fourteen tales of intrigue were cunningly chosen to startle as well as satisfy, while above all holding you in the clammy grasp of. . .

SUSPENSE

 "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier, the source material for the film Hitchcock would do sometime later.

"Man with a Problem" by Donald Honig is a story about a man about to jump off a building and the beat cop trying to talk him down. The twist is that the cop was having an affair with the jumper’s wife and jumper takes them both over the edge at the end.

"They Bite" by Anthony Boucher is a straight up horror story, in which a foreign agent spying on an American desert installation learns of the ancient, bloodthirsty evil dwelling in the old abandoned adobes and dies.

In "The Enemy" by Charlotte Armstrong, a young man tries to help some kids find out who killed their dog and stumbles across a bold murder attempt.

H.G. Wells' "The Inexperience Ghost" starst with some well-bred gentlemen in their exclusive club telling tales to each other.

In "Sentence of Death" by Thomas Walsh, a cop tries to nab a killer with the help of the only reliable witness, and begins developing feelings for her.

"Spring Fever" by Dorthothy Salisbury Davis: a lonely housewife is tempted, then repelled, by a lecherous neighbor pursuing her, ending with violence.

Matthew Gant's "The Crate at Outpost One" has two soldiers guarding an important box with a secret weapon they have to withhold from the enemy. Turns out to be books.

Guy Cullingford's "My Unfair Lady" is about a man worried that he'll be accused of murdering the woman he found dead in the woods. He tries to find the little girl who initially witnessed the crime, only to discover the little girl has an agenda of her own, blackmailing the handsome murderer for free icecream and candy.

In Carter Dickson's "New Murders for Old", a man trying to recover from a nervous breakdown has either been targeted for murder or is losing his mind.

"Terrified" by C.B. Gifford has a man dying slowly after being run off the road, tormented by the young couple who did it. He dies but the cop easily figures it out at the end.

Joan Vatsik's "The Duel" a disturbed woman becomes convinced that a lothario ghost is in love with her, leading to tragic consequences for her husband who dies while she goes insane.

"Four O'Clock" by Price Day is about a man with the power to show the evil in men’s hearts. He decides to make everyone who is evil half the size of a regular man, at 4pm. With himself getting shrunk too as the twist.

Paul Eiden's "Too Many Coincidences" ends the collection. An insurance man ignores his gut feelings about potential danger to his wife because it goes against “the science of math” and she dies. Serves him right for being such a jackass.

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

16 Skeletons from My Closet 2.5Stars

 

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Title: 16 Skeletons from My Closet
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 165
Words: 66K
Publish: 1963

These stories did not work well for me at all. In fact, I got the distinct impression that I was reading the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine leftovers or rejects. I wasn’t, as these had all been published in the AHMM, but this was on par with my read of more recent editions of AHMM than my previous reads of these Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Most of the time I can pick at least 3-4 stories that leave me with a frisson of enjoyment, no matter how twisted, but this time, every single story just fell flat for me or was completely stale.

Not a particularly enjoyable time was spent on reading this :-(

★★✬☆☆

Blurb & Table of Contents:

ALFIE'S GUARANTEE

If you don't shudder with every twist and sudden thrust of these 16 terror tales...

if you are able to turn off your bedside lamp after closing this volume and drift off to a deep, dreamless sleep...

if you can drink your morning coffee without thinking there just might be a peculiarly bitter taste to it, or turn your back on your spouse or best friend without feeling a funny itching between your shoulder blades...

then that lovable old master of menace, Alfred Hitchcock, apologizes and personally guarantees you your full payment in horror. All you have to do is meet him in the cemetery under the next murderer's moon.…

INTRODUCTION by Alfred Hitchcock

GHOST STORY by Henry Kane

WHERE IS THY STING? by James Holding

THE BUTLER WHO DIDN'T DO IT by Craig Rice

CHRISTMAS GIFT by Robert Turner

THE MAN AT THE TABLE by C. B. Gilford

DEATH OF ANOTHER SALESMAN by Donald Honig

MAN WITH A HOBBY by Robert Bloch

...SAID JACK THE RIPPER by Robert Arthur

A GUN WITH A HEART by William Logan

ASSASSINATION by Dion Henderson 

A LITTLE SORORICIDE by Richard Deming

THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY WITH IT by Lawrence Treat

SECRET RECIPE by Charles Mergendahl

DADDY-O by David Alexander

THE CRIME MACHINE by Jack Ritchie

HOMICIDE AND GENTLEMEN by Fletcher Flora

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Coffin Corner 3.5Stars

 

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Title: Coffin Corner
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 176
Words: 71K
Publish: 1968

As I anticipated, smaller doses worked so much better for me. Unlike the bloated corpse of The Best of Mystery, Coffin Corner was a sleek little svelte book that lured me into the back room, then knocked me over the head with a kosh and stole my wallet. That’s a how a good Alfred Hitchcock Presents book should be.

Doesn’t mean it was all koshes and handcuffs though. There was an August Derleth story, and what’s worse, it was a REPEAT! *gasp!!! The only thing worse than a Solar Pons story is a Solar Pons story that I’ve already read and suffered through. Thankfully, once I realized it was a repeat, I just skipped ahead to the next story in the collection. But imagine, the horror of having to experience more Solar Pons? The mind just boggles. At that point, I was almost ready to ask Little Miss Coffin Corner to forego the kosh and just shoot me dead. Nothing is worth a Solar Pons story. Death is preferrable.

Thankfully, other than that, there were no repeats.

The Last Gourmand by Donald Honig was one of those great stories where nobody gets what they wanted out of a crime. Some guy recovers $5,000 (about $55K now) from a stiff who did a robbery. Only his name gets in the news and the mob captures him and tortures him to get it back. He “makes up” some story about stashing it in an old abandoned house. They don’t find it and kill him. Years later two petty crooks figured he must have really hid it well and figure they’ll tear the house apart to find the money. Turns out all those years ago some retarded crook had followed the original guy and found the money. Only he got stuck in a room with the money and because he was retarded, couldn’t figure out how to get out of the room. So he dies. BUT, he eats the money as he’s dying because he’s hungry. So our two crooks get nothing. Everybody loses! When I’m in the right mood, that kind of story feels real good, like when you were a kid and got the chicken pox and you scratched even though you weren’t supposed to.

The ending story was perfect, as it was one of those “the bad guy gets his just desserts” kind of stories. Blood Kin by Richard Deming was about two brothers and how the one son kills his father for his money. Once he runs through that, he prepares to take out his uncle, who is a chemist. Needless to say, the uncle knows, but can’t prove, that the nephew killed his father and that he’s next. But instead of whining to the police and running away like a ballless coward, he devises a plan whereby the nephew “could” knock him off, but adds a little chemistry to the mix and lets the nephew kill himself. Oh, it was glorious. The best part was that if the nephew hadn’t tried to kill his uncle, he would have been perfectly safe. He reaped the consequences of his own evil and it destroyed him. I love stories like that.

There were 14 stories here and that seems to be just about the right amount. Some are good, some are bad (I’m looking at you August Derleth!) and some are just great.

★★★✬☆

Blurb & Table of Contents:

A is for the arsenic he’s fond of.

L is for his lethal taste in tales.

F is for the fiends who are his best friends.

I is for the icepicks that they use.

E is for the extra-special pleasure he takes in every slaying that’s well done.

Put them all together they spell

ALFIE,

The man who says that murder can be fun.

Here are Alfie’s latest and best, in a gathering guaranteed to make a death’s-head grin:

A WALK ON THE MOUNTAIN

     Richard Hardwick

A TIME FOR RIFLES

     H. A. De Rosso

THE LAST GOURMAND

     Donald Honig

SUDDEN, SUDDEN DEATH

     Talmage Powell

CIRCLE IN THE DUST

     Arthur Porges

JOSHUA

     William Brittain

THE AMATEUR PHILOLOGIST

     August Derleth

THIEVES’ HONOR

     John Lutz

THE FINAL CHAPTER

     Richard O. Lewis

THE HELPFUL HORTICULTURIST

     Mary Linn Roby

DEAD OAK IN A DARK WOODS

     Hal Ellson

A RECIPE FOR EGGS

     Frank Sisk

NOT THE KILLER TYPE

     John Arre

BLOOD KIN

     Richard Deming

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Best of Mystery 3.5Stars

 

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Title: Best of Mystery
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 745
Words: 304K
Publish: 1976

When I started this book of short stories, my intention was to take some notes, as I had kind of, sort of, maybe’ish glanced at the page numbers and my brain registered that this wasn’t one of the normal 200-250 page collections. However, I was using this as a buffer to get through both Skitarius and Tech-Priest (of which not even this book could save Tech-Priest). That didn’t lend itself well to taking notes, so I figured I would just do that after I ended up dnf’ing Tech-Priest.

The problem then became that this beast of a book became a crashing avalanche of stories that I dared not stop lest I become crushed under its ponderous weight. There are 63 stories in this volume. That is just too much. If I had stopped to take notes on even ten of these stories, I probably would have dnf’d this collection just out of despair at so much crime and evil being portrayed. So to continue with the avalanche imagery, I had to keep racing down the literary mountain trying to stay one story ahead. I managed it and I was ok, but I don’t think I’ll try to read another Hitchcock collection that is this big again in the future (not that I have any, mind you. I just looked and the next biggest one is just a shade over 400pages, which I think I can handle). The last time I read a collection this big was Tales of Terror, which had 58 stories.

I guess I’m going to chalk this up to a lesson learned, again. Hahahahaa.

★★★✬☆

Table of Contents:

WINTER RUN—Edward D. Hoch

YOU CANT BLAME ME—Henry Slesar

A FLOWER IN HER HAIR—Pauline C. Smith

THE COST OF KENT CASTWELL—Avram Davidson

PSEUDO IDENTITY—Lawrence Block

THAT RUSSIAN!—Jack Ritchie

GALTON AND THE YELLING BOYS—Hillary Waugh

BLIND DATE—Charles Boeckman

PRESSURE—Roderick Wilkinson

THE RUNNING MAN—Bill Pronzini

THE VIETNAM CIRCLE—F. J. Kelly

SADIE WHEN SHE DIED—Ed McBain

A VERY CAUTIOUS BOY—Gilbert Ralston

A TRY FOR THE BIG PRIZE—Borden Deal

VOICE IN THE NIGHT—Robert Colby

UNDERTAKER, PLEASE DRIVE SLOW—Ron Goulart

NEVER SHAKE A FAMILY TREE—Donald E. Westlake

HERE LIES ANOTHER BLACKMAILER—Bill Pronzini

DEAD DUCK—Lawrence Treat

GAMES FOR ADULTS—John Lutz

NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS—James Michael Ullman

VARIATIONS ON A GAME—Patricia Highsmith

CHILD’S PLAY—William Link and Richard Levinson

JUST A LITTLE IMPRACTICAL JOKE—Richard Stark

MURDERER #2—Jean Potts

THE THIRD CALL—Jack Ritchie

DAMON AND PYTHIAS AND DELILAH BROWN—Rufus King

GLORY HUNTER—Richard M. Ellis

LINDA IS GONE—Pauline C. Smith

FRIGHTENED LADY—C. B. Gilford

COME BACK, COME BACK . . .—Donald E. Westlake

ONCE UPON A BANK FLOOR—James Holding

WARRIOR’S FAREWELL—Edward D. Hoch

DEATH BY MISADVENTURE—Wenzell Brown

WITH A SMILE FOR THE ENDING—Lawrence Block

TELEVISION COUNTRY—Charlotte Edwards

ART FOR MONEY’S SAKE—Dan J. Marlowe

NOTHING BUT HUMAN NATURE—Hillary Waugh

MURDER, 1990—C. B. Gilford

PANTHER, PANTHER IN THE NIGHT—Paul W. Fairman

PERFECTLY TIMED PLOT—E. X. Ferrars

#8—Jack Ritchie

ALL THE NEEDLESS KILLING—Bryce Walton

A MELEE OF DIAMONDS—Edward D. Hoch

ONE FOR THE CROW—Mary Barrett

HAPPINESS BEFORE DEATH—Henry Slesar

I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT—Bill Pronzini

NEWS FROM NOWHERE—Ron Goulart

A CASE OF DESPERATION—Kate Wilhelm

AN INTERLUDE FOR MURDER—Paul Tabori

DEATH OVERDUE—Eleanor Daly Boylan

THE BEST-FRIEND MURDER—Donald E. Westlake

PATTERN OF GUILT—Helen Nielsen

A REAL, LIVE MURDERER—Donald Honig

DOCTOR APOLLO—Bryce Walton

THE PURSUER—Holly Roth

FINAL ARRANGEMENTS—Lawrence Page

COUNTDOWN—David Ely

MURDER BETWEEN FRIENDS—Nedra Tyre

CASE OF THE KIND WAITRESS—Henry Slesar

GHOST OF A CHANCE—Carroll Mayers

THE MONTEVIDEO SQUEEZE—James Holding

THE WHITE MOTH—Margaret Chenoweth

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Bleeding Hearts 3.5Stars

 

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Title: Bleeding Hearts
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 171
Words: 67K
Publish: 1974

Man, engaging stories here.

We start off with a story, The Plays the Thing, about a thespian who finally has his big chance on Broadway to play Hamlet. But he’s gone off the deep end and kills his leading lady and uses her skull in the scene where Hamlet is talking about “Alas, poor Yorick!”. He left her body in a traveling trunk. What a nutjob eh?

The next story that stood out to me was The Sensitive Juror. By the end it strained credulity, as the entire story was based on the murderer being able to psychically manipulate a woman on each jury to be sympathetic to him. Even without that little reveal at the at, it was obvious where this story was going, as the current narrator (the sensitive juror) relates the murder trial, which we then re-tread by following her down the almost exact same path. It was just creepy.

Then we had another Fat Jow story, Fat Jow and Chance. This wasn’t so much a mystery as just a community coming together to right a wrong that the Law didn’t recognize as a wrong. It decided me on looking into the Fat Jow stories as an entity unto themselves. Which figures, because it turns out that they were only written for the Alfred Hitchcock collections and I couldn’t even find out any info on the author Robert Alan Blair. Makes me wonder if he was a “house author” and some poor schlub just wrote several Fat Jow stories to pad things out. Oh well.

I like when a story totally subverts your expectations, like how M. Night Shyamalan would put twists into his movies. Well, that happens with Motive: Another Woman in a big way. The story starts out describing a marriage that almost fell apart due to the husband’s philandering. He and his wife work things out and he gets back on the straight and narrow, for 5 years. Then he starts going out to the movies every Sunday evening and his wife doesn’t go with him because the crowded theatre gave her headaches. One day she overhears her husband talking about seeing a young Mrs Bennet the other night. The woman realizes her husband has gone back to his philandering ways, so she plans out a home invasion cover story where she “accidentally” kills her husband thinking he is a burglar. Only for the story to end with her seeing the title of the latest movie at the theatre “The Young Mrs Bennett”. And it just ends. We’re left to imagine what the woman is thinking and feeling, realizing her husband was still staying faithful to her and that she had just murdered him.

I think this is going to be my new “format” for these Hitchcock collections. Just talk about 3-4 stories and let that be the review. Unless I am feeling funny and write a post to amuse myself with my trademark wit and wonder ;-)

★★★✬☆

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock

THE PLAY’S THE THING by Robert Bloch

THE EXECUTIONER by H. A. DeRosso

MAN ON A LEASH by Jack Ritchie

THE DEEP SIX (Novelette) by Richard Hardwick

HIDDEN TIGER by Michael Brett

THE SENSITIVE JUROR by Richard Deming

FAT JOW AND CHANCE by Robert Alan Blair

SLAY THE WICKED (Novelette) by Frank Sisk

INTO THE MORGUE by Hal Ellson

I’LL BE LOVING YOU by Fletcher Flora

MOTIVE: ANOTHER WOMAN by Donald Honig

THE BROTHERHOOD by Theodore Mathieson

THE FINAL REEL by John Lutz

CHIMPS AIN’T CHAMPS by Talmage Powell

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Behind the Death Ball 3.5Stars

 

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Title: Behind the Death Ball
Series: ----------
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 155
Words: 58K
Publish: 1974

Whenever I see August Derleth’s name in these collections, I grimace, because I know I am getting a “Solar Pons” story. Pons is a poorly executed Sherlock Holmes ripoff and Derleth’s story telling just isn’t up to the original. So I grit my teeth, read as fast as I can and try to get it done with, much like eating broccoli. Thankfully, other stories were much better.

Voodoo Doll had an ending I simply did not see coming. I WAS expecting the voodoo doll (it was going to be a toyline) to end up having real power, but when it was given to the little girl who always broke her toys, well, the story ends with one of the creators sitting in a chair while his head is on the other side of the room. It was absolutely ghoulish :-D

The Hitchhikers was also rather ghoulish. It had something like 4-5 double crosses within the story and it was like getting walloped with a couple of left-right-left-right-right in the boxing ring. I did see the final double cross coming, but it was so obvious that I didn’t feel “clever” knowing it was coming. It had that “inevitable” feel more than anything.

The Fat Jow stories, unlike the Solar Pons, are always a good read. I suspect Fat Jow is a ripoff of Charlie Chan, but I am not familiar enough with Chan to know for sure. Jow is a student of human nature and the stories just kind of flow, not a lot of drama. But they still have kick and I like that.

The final story, The Ghost & Mr. Grebner, was amusing, quiet and yet possibly horrific. It didn’t strike me as horrific when I read it, unlike The Hitchhikers. In fact, I thought it was a gentle, amusing end to the collection. A widower is contemplating marriage to a widow and his dead wife’s ghost appears to him and tells him “no”. He argues with the ghost in that distracted, old man way and the ghost goes away. Mr Grebner proposes and leaves the building. Once he gets to the street, he sees a crowd clustered around a body that obviously came from the apartment he was just in. And it ends. So we’re left with that ambiguity of did the ghost somehow force the widow out the window? Is Mr Grebner completely insane and he threw the widow out the window? Is he having hallucinations about everything? We simply don’t know. The entire story is written in that distracted old man way. He doesn’t question talking to his wife’s ghost, he’s more concerned about what is for dinner. It’s a very mellow story and I thought it was a great book end to this collection.

★★★✬☆

Publisher’s Blurb & Table of Contents
Any artist is only as good as his audience. That master orchestrator of terror, Alfred Hitchcock, is no exception. What good is his fearful brand of fiendish fun if he's no nerves to twist, no teeth to set chattering, no vocal chords to strum into high notes of terrified hysteria? That’s where you come in, dear reader. Just put yourself in his skillful hands. He’ll give you a screaming good time with personally selected stories & novelettes by masters of menace & the macabre

1. Perfect Shot-Lawrence Treat

2. The Amateur Philologist-August Derleth

3. The Glint-Arthur Porges

4. The Seventh Man-Helen Nielsen

5. Voodoo Doll-Henry Slesar

6. A Friendly Exorcise-Talmage Powell

7. Many Women Too Many-C.B. Gilford

8. Till Death-Fletcher Flora

9. The Hitchhikers-Bruce Hunsberger

10. Store Cop-Ed Lacy

11. Doom Signal-John Lutz

12. See What’s in the Bag-Hal Ellson

13. Fat Jow & the Walking Woman-Robert Alan Blair

14. The Ghost & Mr. Grebner-Syd Hoff

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

A Kiss Before Dying (Standalone) 1.5Stars

 

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Title: A Kiss Before Dying
Series: ----------
Author: Ira Levin
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 268
Words: 79K
Publish: 1953

I hated almost every second of this book. It was Levin’s debut novel and while his talent was top notch, his choice of material made me sick. We follow the trail of a psychopath as he murders his way through a family because he’s trying to marry into said family for their money. What really set me off was the first murder, where the main character pushes his pregnant girlfriend off of a tall building. That’s when I knew I was in for a bad time.

I think I reacted so strongly against this book because more attention is given to Bud Corliss, the murderer than anything. While some may claim that Levin isn’t glorifying such behavior because Corliss dies at the end, I find that fatuous given that Levin decided to make Bud the main character. It made me sick when we got into Bud’s head.

I regret reading this and I will be assiduously avoiding Levin’s works from here on out.

★✬☆☆☆

From Wikipedia

Burton “Bud” Corliss is a young man with a ruthless drive to rise above his working-class origins to a life of wealth and importance. He serves in the Pacific in World War II, and upon his honorable discharge in 1947 he learns that his father was killed in an automobile accident while he was overseas.

The most pivotal moment in his life occurs during the war, when he first wounds, then kills, a Japanese sniper, who is so terrified that he wets his pants and begs for mercy. Corliss is elated by the total power he holds over the soldier; at the same time, he is disgusted by the man's display of abject terror.

Upon returning to the U.S., he enrolls in college and meets Dorothy Kingship, the daughter of a wealthy copper tycoon. Seeing an opportunity to attain the riches he has always craved, he becomes Dorothy's lover. When she tells him she is pregnant, however, he panics; he is sure that her stern, conservative father will disinherit her. Resolving to get rid of Dorothy, he tricks her into writing a letter that, to an unknowing observer, would look like a suicide note, and then throws her from the roof of a tall building. He runs no risk of getting caught, having urged Dorothy to keep their relationship a secret from her family and friends. He continues to live with his mother, who dotes on him and has no clue as to what he has done.

Corliss lies low for a few months until the press coverage of Dorothy's death has subsided. Then he pursues Dorothy's sister, Ellen, who does not know he was Dorothy's boyfriend. The romance is going according to plan until Ellen begins to probe into Dorothy's death, convinced her sister did not kill herself. Eventually, Ellen uncovers the truth about Corliss and confronts him. Corliss nonchalantly confesses to the crime and kills Ellen as well.

Unfazed by this setback, Corliss courts the last remaining Kingship daughter, Marion. This affair is the most successful; Corliss sweeps her off her feet and charms her father, and soon he and Marion are engaged.

Local college DJ Gordon Gant, who met Ellen during her investigation of Dorothy's death, begins investigating the case, and is immediately suspicious of Corliss. He breaks into Corliss' childhood home and steals a written plan for meeting and seducing Marion to get her family's money. Days before the wedding, he shows up at the Kingship family home and presents Marion and her father with the evidence of Corliss' deception.

Marion, her father, and Gant all corner Corliss during a visit to one of the Kingship family's copper manufacturing plants, threatening to push him into a vat of molten copper unless he confesses his crimes. When they refuse to believe his protestations of innocence, Corliss panics and wets his pants – just as the Japanese soldier, his symbol of pathetic cowardice, had done. He begins to confess, then, delirious with fear and shame, falls to his death in the vat below. The accusers, whose threat was only a bluff, return home in shock. They face the prospect of explaining the incident to Corliss' mother.

A Choice of Evils 4Stars

 

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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 28^th 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

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (September 2012) 2Stars

 

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: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Series: September 2012
Editor: Linda Landrigan
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 122
Words: 45K

Yeah, no. This was no better than the previous editions of this magazine and the stories didn’t have any oomph, any chutzpah, any “grab me by the throat and choke me to death”ness. Landrigan either can’t get a decent set of short stories to publish, or she doesn’t know what a good story is OR, and this is my bet, what she thinks is a good story is so vastly different from everyone else’s definition that it’s impossible to get a good story here. So I’m done with this magazine. I’m going to hunt down as many of the old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” books as I can. At least those old stories had some guts.

Man, this just not my week for getting along with various series. DCI Roderick Alleyn got kicked to the curb. Then I savaged Conan, which just shouldn’t have been possible. Now I’m striking out with an ongoing publication that carries Alfred Hitchcock’s name. If it weren’t for me reading that Nero Wolfe book on Monday, this week would have been a complete reading waste. I haven’t had a week this bad in YEARS. It also means my average for February is going to plummet like the temperatures outdoors.

★★☆☆☆

Table of Contents:

Department: EDITOR'S NOTE: ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE by Linda Landrigan

Department: THE LINEUP

Fiction: THE VAUDEVILLE DETECTIVE by Garnett Elliott

Department: MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

Fiction: BEEHIVE ROUND by Martin Limon

Fiction: BIG WATTS by Doc Finch

Fiction: FOOL'S GOLD by Dee Long

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Fiction: BRUTAL by Robert Lopresti

Fiction: THE BEST LAID PLANS by Jim Ingraham

Mystery Classic: NIGHT AT THE INN by Georgette Heyer, selected and Introduced by Jane K. Cleland

Department: THE STORY THAT WON

Department: COMING IN OCTOBER 2012

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (July/August 2012) 3Stars

 

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: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Series: July/August 2012
Editor: Linda Landrigan
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 207
Words: 81K

With this being a double issue of the magazine, there were more stories, but there was a longer novella size story at the end, a story that won the Black Orchid novella award. Some award given by hoity toity gate keepers of Rex Stout’s stories, ooh lah lah. Whatever, I stick my thumb in their eyes and drag their pathetic brains out, as they writhe in agony while I watch them slowly die.

I was fully prepared to hate that novella, just for winning. But you know what? It was decent. “I” never would have given it an award, but it did help bring the quality of writing up for this magazine.

More stories helped though. Made me feel like I was reading one of Hitchcock’s old anthology books instead of a dodgy ezine.

This was interesting enough that I’ll try the next one.

★★★☆☆

Table of Contents:

Department: EDITOR'S NOTE: DETECTION ON THE DOUBLE by Linda Landrigan

Department: THE LINEUP

Fiction: THE BEST THING FOR THE LIVER by Janice Law

Fiction: AUTUMN CHILL by John H. Dirckx

Fiction: MARLEY'S RESCUE by John C. Boland

Department: MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

Fiction: DEATH ON THE RANGE by Elaine Menge

Fiction: ASSIGNMENT IN CLAY by Donald Moffitt

Fiction: BURNING DAYLIGHT by David Edgerley Gates

Fiction: TIGHTENING OF THE BOND by R. T. Lawton

Fiction: GHOST NEGLIGENCE by John Shepphird

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Fiction: 364 DAYS by John R. Corrigan

Black Orchid Novella Award: INNER FIRE by Jolie McLarren Swann

Department: THE STORY THAT WON

Department: COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2012

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (June 2012) 3Stars

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: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Series: June 2012
Editor: Linda Landrigan
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 123
Words: 47K

---

Slightly better than the previous magazine, but not by much. Weighing in at only 120+ pages, this doesn’t feel like a collection; which to be fair, it isn’t, it is a magazine. But that has made me realize that I’m not a fan of magazine length collections of stories.

Also, these really feel like reject stories that weren’t good enough for anywhere else. My bias is definitely playing a big part of that, but these stories just don’t have the verve, the snap, the creepiness that the stories in the old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents…” books had. Part of that is because the stories are trying to ape those by using the 1920’s through the 1980’s as their setting but with 2010’s sensibilities. You can’t do that successfully and none of these authors did.

I’ll read the rest of what I’ve got available for this magazine, but after that I’ll go deep diving on the dark net and dig up whatever old collection of Alfred Hitchcock’s collections from back in the day that I can find.

I guess this magazine just leaves a faint aftertaste of disappointment in my literary mouth.

★★★☆☆

---

Table of Contents:

Click to Open

Department: EDITOR’S NOTE: CRIME TIME by Linda Landrigan

Department: THE LINEUP

Fiction: THE SELLOUT by Mike Cooper

Fiction: THEA’S FIRST HUSBAND by B.K. Stevens

Fiction: CUPS AND VARLETS by Kenneth Wishnia

Fiction: LAST SUPPER by Jane K. Cleland

Department: MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

Fiction: THE POT HUNTERS by David Hagerty

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Mystery Classic: AFTERNOON OF A PHONY by Cornell Woolrich, Selected and Introduced by Francis M. Nevins

Department: THE STORY THAT WON

Department: COMING IN JULY 2012

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (May 2012) 3Stars

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: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Series: May 2012
Editor: Linda Landrigan
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 115
Words: 41K

---

Having finished up the collections of old Hitchcock anthologies that I had on hand, I found a couple of the “new” Mystery Magazines and decided to try them out. This was touted (on the cover) as the “humor issue” and I’m afraid the writers took that to mean “light and whimsical” instead of as funny.

The stories themselves barely passed muster and if I’d had to read a whole book, instead of a magazine, of them, I think I can safely say this would have gotten 2.5stars. These were the kind of stories that get salted between good stories in the old collections; that way you didn’t notice their mediocrity as much. You just forgot about them. But here, all you had was mediocre and so while I have already forgotten them, I can’t collectively forget them.

I have several issues of this magazine to try out. What does give me hope is that you can still get subscriptions (paper or digital) to AHMM, so they must have done something correct to keep on going this long. I just hope I find out what, because this issue was not very good.

What I am afraid of is that people are so undiscriminating in their reading tastes that anything with Hitchcock’s name will draw them in and they will accept any old sock as a “good story” when it really isn’t.

I’m just being really negative right now though. So here’s to a brighter future in later issues!

★★★☆☆

---

Table of Contents – click to open

Department: EDITOR’S NOTE: UNEXPECTED by Linda Landrigan

Department: THE LINEUP

Fiction: SHANKS COMMENCES by Robert Lopresti

Fiction: LEWIS AND CLARK by John M. Floyd

Fiction: SPRING BREAK by R.T. Lawton

Department: MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH: DOGWATCH

Fiction: WIND POWER by Eve Fisher

Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

Fiction: FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY by Ron Goulart

Fiction: FASHIONED FOR MURDER by Shauna Washington

Fiction: MR. CROCKETT AND THE BEAR by Evan Lewis

Fiction: CARRY-ON by Wayne J. Gardiner

Department: THE STORY THAT WON

Department: COMING IN JUNE 2012

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Portraits of Murder 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: Portraits of Murder
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 607
Words: 241K

---

This is the final Alfred Hitchcock collection that I have access to. After this, I have several of the issues of the new magazine. So it seems fitting to end this reading journey, which started in 2021 with “Death Mate”, with a gigantic collection (it is over 600 pages after all) of murder, almost murder and revenge.

Of the 47 stories, I found that only 2 or 3 were repeats and they were good enough that I didn’t mind reading them again. This kept me occupied for almost a week, as I would just dip my toes into its pages each night until I was tired enough to go to sleep. That’s a great way to read a collection of short stories.

The final 10 or so stories dealt with the supernatural. There was a clear demarcation up to that point. Everything up to then had been plain old people doing dirty or being done dirty. Then suddenly things got all supernatural. It was kind of jarring, as it felt like a completely different collection. Murder was still the main dish, but suddenly the menu with all the sides had changed, dramatically. It was like I went from having the option of ordering loaded baked potatoes, cheese sticks or onion rings to carrot sticks, apple slices or plain yoghurt. And that is why this collection was 4stars and not more. It was too much of a change for me to comfortably enjoy.

★★★★☆

---

Table of Contents:

Click to Open

EDWARD D. HOCH—Shattered Rainbow

DONALD HONIG—Wonderful, Wonderful Violence

LAWRENCE BLOCK—The Most Unusual Snatch

NEDRA TYRE—A Murder Is Arranged

HENRY SLESAR—The Poisoned Pawn

DON TOTHE—The Lifesaver

JACK RITCHIE—What Frightened You, Fred?

HAROLD Q. MASUR—Doctor’s Dilemma

CLARK HOWARD—Money To Burn

BABS H. DEAL—The House Guest

WILLIAM LINK and RICHARD LEVINSON—The Man in the Lobby

LAWRENCE TREAT—Family Code

WILLIAM BANKIER—To Kill an Angel

PAULINE C. SMITH—That Monday Night

CHARLES W. RUNYON—The Waiting Room

CLARK HOWARD—The Keeper

BILL PRONZINI—The Jade Figurine

REYNOLD JUNKER—The Volunteers

EDWARD D. HOCH—Arbiter of Uncertainties

FLETCHER FLORA—Variations on an Episode

ED LACY—Finders-Killers

W. E. DAN ROSS—The Pearls of Li Pong

MICHAEL COLLINS—Who?

STANLEY ABBOTT—A Quiet Backwater

PHIL DAVIS—Murder, Anyone?

WILLIAM JEFFREY—The Island

HAL ELLSON—Room to Let

AL NUSSBAUM—The One Who Got Away

BRYCE WALTON—Unidentified and Dead

EDWIN P. HICKS—The Lure and the Clue

BORDEN DEAL—The Big Bajoor

JACK RITCHIE—The Operator

DONALD OLSON—The Souvenir

NANCY SCHACHTERLE—Speak Well for the Dead

JONATHAN CRAIG—The Girl in Gold

DONALD HONIG—Minutes of Terror

ARTHUR PORGES—Puddle

LAWRENCE BLOCK—When This Man Dies

ELIJAH ELLIS—Public Office

MARGARET B. MARON—The Beast Within

C. B. GILFORD—Murder in Mind

ARTHUR PORGES—The Invisible Tomb

JAMES H. SCHMITZ—Just Curious

HENRY SLESAR—The Girl Who Found Things

CLAYTON MATTHEWS—Death Trance

GEORGE C. CHESBRO—The Healer

PATRICK O’KEEFFE—Murder by Dream

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Bar the Doors 3Stars

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: Bar the Doors
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 198
Words: 59K

---

The subtitle for this book is “13 Great Tales of Terror by Masters of the Macabre”. This collection uses a lot of short stories that didn’t appear in Hitchcock’s own mystery magazine and it shows. Not that they are in any way bad, but they don’t have that “curated by Hitchcock” feel that I get from other collections.

Also, while I have kept this in the “crime fiction” fiction, the tales of terror subtitle is much more accurate. Not all are supernatural. Some are blatantly physical, such as The Storm, in which a woman comes home a week early only to find her husband is out. And she finds a woman’s body in a moving trunk with a distinctive ring on it’s finger. The story ends with her being gaslit by her husband and seeing that same ring on his finger. It was just plain creepy but nothing supernatural. Then you have Pollock and the Porroh Man which is ALL about the supernatural. A man takes a voodoo man’s woman and then tries to kill the voodoo man and in the process gets cursed. He then kills the voodoo man, so there is no way to lift the curse. The head of the voodoo man follows him back to England and haunts him until he goes insane and he kills himself. Lovely, eh?

I was particularly interested in this collection because of the inclusion of two authors, Ambrose Bierce and Augustus Derleth. Both were small time contributors to the King in Yellow and Cthulhu mythologies and I was hoping that these stories would give me a taste of what they were like. I was not impressed. Derleth’s story, The Metronome, was a simple ghost story about a murdered boy murdering the step-mother who had killed him. I actually had to go and read the story again before writing this because I had completely forgotten what it was about a mere week after reading it. It wasn’t bad but there wasn’t a single memorable thing about it. Bierce’s The Damned Thing, was about an invisible monster that killed a man in front of his friend the story is the friend relating it all at the inquest. The inquest ends with the jury deciding the man who was killed was killed by a mountain lion. While nothing spectacular, it did have that fatalistic feel of “nothing I say or does matters” which I’ve come to associate very strongly with Cosmic Horror.

I did have a bad scan of this, as it was quite apparent that someone had simply scanned the pages from the original paperback and sent it out into the wild without cleaning it up at all. So there would be random “Authors Name Page X” or “Story Name Page X” scattered throughout the text. That detracted from the flow of reading through this smoothly. Kind of like hitting a nail in tree while chopping it down using a chainsaw. If you’ve ever had that experience, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Finally, the cover. The version I had originally came with some lame picture of Hitchcock in a rain coat in the rain at a doorway about to enter. It was blasé. I chose this cover because it’s very creepy looking and is actually semi-related to the story “The Kill”.

★★★☆☆

---

Table of Contents:

• SPEAKING OF TERROR Alfred Hitchcock
• POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN H. G. Wells
• THE STORM McKnight Malmar
• MOONLIGHT SONATA Alexander Woollcott
• THE HALF-PINT FLASK DuBose Heyward
• THE KILL Peter Fleming
• THE UPPER BERTH F. Marion Crawford
• MIDNIGHT EXPRESS Alfred Noyes
• THE DAMNED THING Ambrose Bierce
• THE METRONOME August Derleth
• THE PIPE-SMOKER Martin Armstrong
• THE CORPSE AT THE TABLE Samuel Hopkins Adams
• THE WOMAN AT SEVEN BROTHERS Wilbur Daniel Steele
• THE BOOK Margaret Irwin

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

The Crime Cult (The Shadow #12) 3.5Stars

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 WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Crime Cult
Series: The Shadow #12
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 156
Words: 50K

---

The Shadow goes up against a devotee of the Thuggee sect, which is devoted to the death goddess Kali. If you’ve ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you’ll get a decent picture of the Thuggee cult. But they’re are also practitioners of the art of death by strangulation. So every victim in this story was strangled to death.

I’ve read another short story about Thuggees, either in an Alfred Hitchcock Collection or one of the Roald Dahl adult books, but I can’t be bothered to track down one specific short story. Anyway, that story also dealt with the strangulation side of the Cult, so that wasn’t a revelation here.

The more I read of these Shadow stories, the more I can why everyone says Batman was born of the Shadow. This time I noticed just how afraid the thugs, criminals and gangsters are of the Shadow and how he not only uses that fear, but encourages it. They SHOULD fear him. It reminds me of how Batman started. He wanted something to scare the badguys, to put the fear of God into their hearts and he would out-think them but also out-fight them. The Shadow had his time, and I enjoy reading these novels, but I don’t see him ever making a comeback. I mean, Batman is on the skids after all these years due to really bad story telling and the authors and artists relying on the fans buying crap just because of nostalgia and past associations. The era of Batman is coming to a close too I think.

When I wrote about Foundation and Empire last month, I mentioned how the length of it worked for me. These Shadow novels are built along the same lines and I just love it. It’s enough to entertain me without bogging me down. There are times when I’m reading a book and if I realize it’s over 300 pages I kind of groan to myself because I know the author is going to fill in all the background when I just wanted a two paragraph description of the whole world. Even better, one paragraph would suit me just fine! But instead of whining about that, I realize I have that need for brevity and these Shadow books are filling that need perfectly.

While this is the first book I am reviewing in 2024, it was not the first I read. I read a very mediocre book and just couldn’t face up to writing a review for a completely boring and mediocre book as my first review of the year. So I decided to read a good book and review it first. That’s the beauty of scheduling posts a week or so ahead of schedule, I can do things like that. I am glad to be reviewing a Shadow book first thing. It’s brief, exciting and filled with bad, gun toting thugs, decent upstanding men in the Shadow’s employ and a main character who totes two automatic pistols and isn’t afraid to use them.

★★★✬☆

---

From the Publisher

Click to Open

The marks of death were upon them. A mysterious round burn no bigger than a dime scarred each forehead; upon each throat was a thin, almost invisible white line. The police were baffled, but each of the victims knew that his time was up and his page in the book of death had come due. It was obviously a case for The Shadow but the most famous crimefighter of all was missing!

• All of My “The Shadow” Reviews

Get Me to the Wake On Time 3Stars

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: Get Me to the Wake On Time
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 175
Words: 70K

---

I had another Hitchcock collection on tap before this one. It was titled “Scream Along with Me”. Unfortunately, it was a very bad scan that was nothing but images of the text instead of the text itself. That means I couldn’t change the text size or have it reflow on my kindle or change the font. That kind of thing is why I read ebooks in the first place. If I want a fixed font size, I’ll go read a paper book, thank you very much.

So with that scintillating reading fact under your belt, on to the review itself.

I enjoyed this. The end.

Seriously, that’s all you get, folks. I’m tired and the words aren’t flowing.

Well, the cover is cool. Might have to use it for my cover love at the end of the month. I’ve had several cool covers this month though, so I’m going to be in the unenviable position of having to choose one over the others. If you know anything about books, you know what special snowflakes they are and how easily their feelings get hurt. I’m not looking forward to telling the losers that they ARE losers and just aren’t good enough. Books these days, just a bunch of pansies!

★★★☆☆

---

Table of Contents:

Click to Open

Introduction by ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Goodbye, Now by GIL BREWER

Woman Missing by HELEN NIELSEN

Murder Me Gently by C. B. GILFORD

Be My Valentine by HENRY SLESAR

The Marquesa by RAY RUSSELL

Highly Recommended by MICHAEL BRETT

Old Man Emmons by TALMAGE POWELL

The Drum Major by ARTHUR PORGES

Upside-Down World by JACK RITCHIE

Nice Work If You Can Get It by DONALD HONIG

Bach In A Few Minutes by FLETCHER FLORA

Polka-Dot Blonde by RICHARD HARDWICK

Experience Is Helpful by ROG PHILLIPS

Lucrezia by H. A. DEROSSO

• All of My “Alfred Hitchcock” Reviews

Double Z (The Shadow #11) 3.5Star

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 WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Double Z
Series: The Shadow #11
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 188
Words: 60K

---

Good stuff. As I noted at the beginning of the month:

Currently Reading Cover Love: Double Z

I really liked the cover. We will see what else the month holds, but I suspect this will earn that coveted (oh so coveted!) award of Cover Love of the Month. Doesn’t get much more honorable than that, let me tell you!

The story itself was pretty good too. We get another “Agent” of the Shadow introduced. At this point I’m not even trying to remember who is who, I just read “Character Agent X” and nod my head and continue reading. The Shadow faces off against an old Chinese guy who has a booby trapped house and that was pretty cool. Sadly, Old Chinese Guy isn’t Double Z. He should have been though. He has the booby trapped house. He has poisons. He has a young protege. He has underworld connections. So of course Double Z turns out to be some disgruntled, too rich, businessman. It was kind of anti-climactic to find out it was him. I mentally went “Really, that guy? He’s not even oatmeal, much less Villain of the Month Flavor”. Thankfully, I got all the flavor I needed with Old Chinese Guy. Soy sauce baby!

Another successful entry in the Shadow series. I recommend this series if you like pulp stories.

★★★✬☆

---

From Bookstooge.blog

Double Z, a mysterious underworld figure, has leaked information to the police about people who are going to get killed. Now he has decided to move into the game himself, thus setting himself on a collision course with The Shadow. Utilizing the services of corrupt old chinese triad leader, Double Z intends on being the one to survive that collision.

In the end, Double Z is unmasked as a bored businessman with too much time on his hands and not brains in his skull. The Shadow and his servants prevail and Right is Victorious.

• All of My “The Shadow” Reviews