Tales of Terror ★★★✬☆

~ Bookstooge

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: 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!

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

19 thoughts on “Tales of Terror ★★★✬☆”

    1. I did a little reading up on them. Apparently when Doyle killed off Sherlock somebody else wanted to write more Sherlock stories but Doyle said no. So this guy created Solar Pons and Dr Parker.
      I guess there are a LOT of P&P stories. Who knew?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. It’s funny they came up in this collection; I have a Tales of Terror anthology but it’s put together by Arthur Conan Doyle. Something tells me Pons and Parker won’t be in the table of contents. 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

    1. Are the books stored in your amazon store? If so, here’s what you need to know. (more data at the end)
      1) Install calibre from:
      https://calibre-ebook.com/download

      2) Install the no-drm plugin from:
      https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

      3) download k4pc or email me for a 1.17 version

      4) download the books from amazon to k4pc. Then add those books to calibre and no-drm will do its thing. Then calibre can convert those files into whatever format you need.

      I realize that’s a LOT of info and things to do. If you need more help, email me at protonmail or go to https://www.mobileread.com/

      It’s a lot of work to get setup, but once you’ve got it running, it takes almost zero upkeep.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

        1. Just so you know, the drm (what keeps you from being able to read any ebook on any device you want) is put in place by the publishers. It definitely benefits amazon too though.

          And that’s why the tools I mention are so important. Your ebooks should truly be yours. If you’re really interested, we can take this one step at a time and get things setup. Then you’re good to go for years and years.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s