Having discovered for myself the results of Robert Arthur's industry in "Hitchcock" anthologies in 1974-75, my father had picked up this odd bird, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen, for me among the front-cover-stripped paperbacks he'd buy at this shady display somewhere in Boston (the rest of us in the family still living in Enfield, Connecticut for that 1975-76 school year). Unlike the Arthur volumes, all the stories (rather than a few, mixed in with many from other sources) were from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which by this time I'd seen around the Enfield Library, with oddly ugly covers and interior illustrations, but clearly something worth looking into. Meanwhile, this compilation wasn't quite as diverse nor horror-imbued as a typical AH Presents: anthology, but certainly close enough:
For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
Contents:
- Bomb #14 by Jack Ritchie — from AHMM 2(8)
- The Forgiving Ghost by C.B. Gilford
- The Children of Noah by Richard Matheson — from AHMM 2(3)
- An Attractive Family by Robert Arthur
- Let the Sucker Beware by Charles Einstein
- Fair Game by John Cortez
- The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)
- Your Witness by Helen Nielsen
- Blackout by Richard Deming
- The October Game by Ray Bradbury — from AHMM 2(6) [as reprinted from Weird Tales magazine]
- Stop Calling Me "Mister" by Jonathan Craig
- The Last Escape by Jay Street
- Not a Laughing Matter by Evan Hunter
- Most Agreeably Poisoned by Fletcher Flora
- The Best-Friend Murder by Donald E. Westlake
For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.