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Title: Let It All Bleed Out
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 172
Words: 69K

From the Inside Cover:

Alfie Doesn’t Mind Being Called Square

Alfred Hitchcock is frankly shocked by the temptations that surround us today. X-rated movies. Sweaty centerfolds. Naughty novels. Kids who used to cut grass now smoking it. All of this fills Alfie with alarm.

Let’s return to old-fashioned fun, he pleads. A nice gory stabbing. A neatly drawn strangler’s noose. A proper pistol shot in the dark. A scream of horror that makes you walk away whistling.

For, as the master shows in this nerve-twisting new collection, fads come and go, but evil is here to stay. So let’s strip the mod clothes off the victims, and—

LET IT ALL BLEED OUT

Table of Contents:

COLD NIGHT ON LAKE LENORE

     Jonathan Craig

THE ATTITUDE OF MURDER

     Nedra Tyre

HAND

     William Brittain

SHERIFF PEAVY’S DOUBLE DEAD CASE (A NOVELETTE)

     Richard Hardwick

RICH—OR DEAD

     David A. Heller

YELLOW SHOES

     Hal Ellson

THE MAN WHO HATED TURKEY (A NOVELETTE)

     Elijah Ellis

COFFEE BREAK

     Arthur Porges

A PADLOCK FOR CHARLIE DRAPER

     James Holding

MAC WITHOUT A KNIFE

     Talmage Powell

THE CHINLESS WONDER

     Stanley Abbott

NO TEARS FOR AN INFORMER

     H. A. De Rosso

A RARE BIRD

     John Lutz

THE COMIC OPERA

     Henry Woodfin

---

As much as I really like the stories Hitchcock puts together, I am realizing that having a smaller amount actually works in its favor. Being left wanting more actually enhances the stories I’ve already read. Instead of being a book glutton and gorging myself and feeling sick, having just enough is the correct amount. Looking back over the various books, it seems like 300 pages is the upper limit. After that I start to feel too full and get cranky about stuff I wouldn’t normally.

Cold Night on Lake Lenore was a great opener. A man patiently waits for the perfect opportunity to kill his wife. It arrives but he is seen by another woman, who thinks he did it to be with her. He marries her and the last thought is of him thinking he just has to wait for the perfect opportunity again, and that he’s a patient man. It got me thinking about the kind of people who murder others. I’d like to think that the kind of person who could do something like this (murder someone and yet showing perfect restraint until the “perfect” moment) doesn’t exist, as the willingness to do the one would preclude the ability to do the other, but alas, all you have to do is read the news and you read about some guy who’s killed 3 wives and they only caught him because he got cocky about disposing of the remains of Number 4. Just goes to show humans aren’t just simple blobs of matter, even if that’s a negative example, sigh.

The Chinless Wonder was kind of on the other side. A loser of a man decides that he’s sick of being himself and gets a disguise and creates a new identity and hooks up with some chick. Everything is going extremely well until he gets mixed up with the mob. In the end, the girl and her boyfriend were playing him and set him up for the murder of his alter-ego and then to really nail him, the mob boss. Oh, it was priceless watching the pieces move into place. I wasn’t sure exactly where the story was going but after he helped sink a big sack in the river, I figured it out and like I said, just watched the pieces move into position. It was a thing of wonder.

This was just long enough to satisfy me and yet still leaving me wanting more. The perfect combination really.

★★★★☆

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Title: Stories To Stay Awake By
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 198
Words: 78K

Table of Contents:
Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)

Success of a Mission by William Arden

The Splintered Monday by Charlotte Armstrong

Death by Judicial Hanging by Francis Beeding

Floral Tribute by Robert Bloch

Red Wine by Lawrence G. Blochman

Canavan’s Back Yard by Joseph Payne Brennan

A Murderous Slice by Marguerite Dickinson

The New Deal by Charles Einstein

Boomerang by Guy Fleming

Sleep is the Enemy by Anthony Gilbert

The Second Coming by Joe Gores

From the Mouse to the Hawk by Dion Henderson

Letter to the Editor by Morris Hershman

The Spy Who Came to the Brink by Edward D. Hoch

Second Talent by James Holding

The Ohio Love Sculpture by Adobe James

Homicide House by Day Keene

---

Every story here revolves around somebody dying or being killed or being a killer. I found them linked thematically quite well and they didn’t seem like random stories just lumped together.

I really liked the final story, Homicide House by Day Keene. As soon as the narrator revealed that he was bricking up the body of his murdered wife, I knew exactly where the story was going to end and it was ghoulishly delightful to watch as the story went down the path I had predicted.

This book was originally released in hardback with 35 stories and then later on was released in two paperbacks with each containing half the stories. The second paperback was called More Stories To Stay Awake By but I haven’t been able to track down an ebook version, not even a pdf scan, so I will probably not be able to read the other 18 stories from the original. What a shame.

★★★✬☆

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Title: Dates with Death
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 210
Words: 76K

Due to everything going on when I read this (see my “Personal” section of the January ‘23 Roundup and Ramblings post), I simply don’t remember a thing. So I’m including the table of contents and calling it good. The rating is based off of my previous Hitchcock reads and the fact that I can remember nothing bad about any of the stories.

TOC

THE DUSTY DRAWER – Harry Muheim

DRUM BEAT – Stephen Marlowe

THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE – Matthew Gant

THE QUEEN’S JEWEL – James Holding

THAT TOUCH OF GENIUS – William Sambrot

THE CROOKED ROAD – Alex Gaby

THE AMATEUR – Michael Gilbert

THE SINGING PIGEON – Ross Macdonald

JUSTICE MAGNIFIQUE – Lawrence Treat

GREEDY NIGHT – E. C. Bentley

A HUMANIST – Romain Gary

THE OBLONG ROOM – Edward D. Hoch

DEAD MAN’S STORY – Howard Rigsby

THE JANISSARIES OF EMILION – Basil Copper

CHINOISERIE – Helen McCloy

★★★✬☆

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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 12^th Hitchcock anthology I’ve read and I’ve still got 8 more to go. I am loving it!

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Title: Once Upon a Dreadful Time
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 166
Words: 65.5K

Synopsis:

From the Inside Cover & ToC

MURDERERS TO REMEMBER

Greedy husbands, hen-pecking wives, fickle bachelors, nosey spinsters, grumbling servants, wronged maidens, crooked executives, jealous siblings—these are the unsung heroes and heroines of crime. Where professionals rarely execute an inspirational murder, these mere amateurs persecute and kill with passionate ingenuity. But, alas, all too often the brilliance of their acts has to be admired by them alone. For a perfect crime, by definition, must go undetected.

In this volume you are given a rare opportunity to ob serve, with their reluctant permission, these dedicated masters of murder at their ingenious best. It is an experience you are likely never to forget.

DEPARTMENT OF THE DEPARTED

     Alfred J. Hitchcock

A LITTLE PUSH FROM CAPPY FLEERS

     Gilbert Ralston

THE SAFE STREET

     Paul Eiden

NO ONE ON THE LINE

     Robert Arthur

ANTIQUE

     Hal Ellson

SUSPICION IS NOT ENOUGH

     Richard Hardwick

A FAMILY AFFAIR

     Talmage Powell

GRANNY’S BIRTHDAY

     Fredric Brown

THIRD PARTY IN THE CASE

     Philip Ketchum

HILL JUSTICE

     John Faulkner

IF THIS BE MADNESS

     Lawrence Block

ANATOMY OF AN ANATOMY

     Donald E. Westlake

A COOL SWIM ON A HOT DAY

     Fletcher Flora

BY THE SEA, BY THE SEA

     Hal Dresner

BODIES JUST WON’T STAY PUT

     Tom MacPherson

THE DANGERFIELD SAGA

     C. B. Gilford

NUMBER ONE SUSPECT

     Richard Deming

My Thoughts:

This was a very good collection but at the same time it was really, really weird. Being about murder, well, what do you expect? So, some stories were about good guy murdering some scum who deserved it but who had eluded justice. Other stories were about 2 badguys falling out and trying to off each other. While others were about annoying people who get murdered and you feel ok with it. Some were about people getting murdered and the murderer getting away with it, sometimes that was good and sometimes it was a bad thing.

So this really ran the whole gamut. Some stories were fantastic vigilante justice and others were just horrible murder. And the thing was, you could never tell going into a story which part of the spectrum you’d end up on. It was just the right sort of unsettled feeling I’d expect from an Alfred Hitchcock presentation.

“Granny’s Birthday” was probably the most unsettling, as it involved a whole family, led by their Matriarch, as they kill two people who are not part of the family. It was a very short story, no more than a couple of pages, but man, was it intense and shockingly abrupt.

Outside the occasional twinge of “what did I just read?”, I really enjoyed my time with this collection. Overall, the stories edited by Hitchcock are all quite entertaining.

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Title: Skull Sessions
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 161
Words: 62.5K

Synopsis:

From the Inside Cover & TOC

THE DO-IT-YOURSELF MURDER KIT

To do a good, honest job of murder (and nowadays you pretty much have to do it yourself, labor costs being what they are) you need several all-important ingredients.

Choose a weapon. That’s hard. There are just so many of them. But remember, a workman is no better than his tools.

Find a victim. That’s easy. There are just so many of them. But remember, an artist is no better than his material.

Then a plan.

That’s where this book will come in handy. . .

SKULL SESSION

A DEGREE OF INNOCENCE—Helen Nielsen

ONE UNNECESSARY MAN—Talmage Powell

KILL ME, MY SWEET—C.B. Gilford

SAM’S HEART—Henry Slesar

THE INCOMPLETE CORPSE—Jack Webb

LUCK IS NO LADY—Robert Bloch

SWEET SPIRIT—Donald Honig

THE ONLY BAD POLICEMAN—Paul Eiden

THE WITNESS WAS A LADY—Fletcher Flora

THE EPISODE OF THE TELEPHONE NUMBER—Charles Einstein

COME BACK, COME BACK—Donald E. Westlake

ADVENTURES OF THE SUSSEX ARCHERS—August Derleth

FAT JOW—Robert Alan Blair

VACATION—Mike Brett

My Thoughts:

The only fly in the ointment was the “Pons & Parker” story by Derleth (P&P are a complete ripoff of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, not even trying to cover it up at all) and the Fat Jow story by Blair. I just don’t like Jow, as I experienced him in another Hitchcock collection.

Other than that, this was a great collection of crime stories and nasty things happening to unpleasant people. Of course, not all of them followed that formula. “The Only Bad Policeman” is the perfect example. A man defends himself and his 2 boys against a drunk policeman with a martial art from his home country. Everyone cheers him on but the story ends with him getting arrested as he accidentally killed the policeman. Now that’s a downer of a story!

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