But AHP: Dates with Death, as the first Dell paperback was retitled, was a memorable reading experience, as were all the Random House "Hitchcock" volumes; Spider Robinson, writing in Galaxy magazine in the '70s, referred to them as "utterly reliable" and I'd agree. I'm only sorry it took me some decades to get around to the entire book. (Never did run across the second Dell volume drawn from Month.)Contents of the hardcover original:
ix · If, Indeed, It Is Evening-- · Robert Arthur (attributed by implication to Hitchcock) · in
A Week of Crime
3 · The Dusty Drawer · Harry Muheim · ss Collier’s May 3 1952
18 ·Drum Beat by Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #2 1960
22 · South of Market by Joe Gores, first published as "Down and Out" (ss) Manhunt Jun 1959
38 · The Uses of Intelligence by "Matthew Gant" (Arnold Hano); 1952 (reprint: Sleuth Mystery Magazine Oct 1958)
50 · Love Will Find a Way by David Alexander (ss) 1960
59 · Retribution by Michael Zuroy (ss) Manhunt Apr 1961
63 · The Queen's Jewel by James Holding, 1964
A Week of Suspense
75 · Pool Party by "Andrew Benedict" (Robert Arthur) (ss) Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Oct 1969
88 · That Touch of Genius by William Sambrot (ss) Escapade Jan 1967
97 · The Crooked Road by Alex Gaby (ss) Argosy Jan 1958
112 · A Taste for Murder by Jack Ritchie (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1963
116 · The Twelve-Hour Caper by Mike Marmer (ss) Cosmopolitan May 1961
126 · The Amateur by Michael Gilbert [Insp. (Supt.) Hazlerigg series], (ss) John Bull Nov 19 1949, as “Amateur in Violence”
137 · Death Wish by Lawrence Block (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 1967
A Week of Detection
149 · The Singing Pigeon by "Ross Macdonald" (Kenneth Millar) (ss) 1953, reprinted in Manhunt May 1964 (as by John Ross Macdonald)
180 · Justice Magnifique by Lawrence Treat (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1958
193 · The White Hat by Sax Rohmer [Paul Harley series], (nv) The Story-teller Jun 1920 (Arthur had reprinted it in The Mysterious Traveler Magazine Mar 1952)
213 · Hard Sell by "Craig Rice" [ghost written by Lawrence Block; John J. Malone series], (ss) Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #1 1960
221 · Greedy Night by E. C. Bentley (ss) Parody Party, edited by Leonard Russell, Hutchinson 1936
232 · A Twilight Adventure by Melville Davisson Post [Uncle Abner series], (ss) Metropolitan Magazine Apr 1914
243 · Murder Matinee by Harold Q. Masur, ss 1946
A Week of the Macabre
261 · A Humanist by Romain Gary (ss) The Saturday Evening Post Oct 26 1963
266 · The Oblong Room by Edward D. Hoch [Captain Leopold series], (ss) The Saint Magazine Jul 1967
276 · Love Me, Love Me, Love Me by M.S. Waddell (aka Martin Waddell), (ss) The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert van Thal, Pan 1965
283 · Special Handling by John Keefauver, (ss) 1969 (possibly a story original to this anthology)
288 · Dead Man's Story by Howard Rigsby (ss) Argosy Aug 27 1938, as “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” (reprinted by Arthur in The Mysterious Traveler Magazine Nov 1951 under new title)
299 · The Legend of Joe Lee by John D. MacDonald (ss) Cosmopolitan Oct 1964
310 · Crooked Bone by Gerald Kersh (nv) The Saturday Evening Post Aug 10 1968
A Short Week of Long Ones
335 · The Janissaries of Emilion by Basil Copper (nv) The Eighth Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert van Thal (Pan 1967)
354 · Chinoiserie by Helen McCloy (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1946
377 · Soldier Key by Sterling E. Lanier [Brigadier Ffellowes series], (nv) The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Aug 1968
The delightful conceit of 31 stories, a menu for four weeks and the extra three days, was about as high-concept as Arthur had chosen to go with with his anthologies ghosted for Hitchcock, and unfortunately the paperbacks, theoretically out of necessity, had to abandon that schtick.
The story rundowns for the two Dell volumes:
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Dates with Death (Stories from A Month of Mystery Volume 1 as subtitle on the 1972 edition but dropped from the 1976)
ix · If, Indeed, It Is Evening-- · Robert Arthur ("signed" by Hitchcock) · in
1 · The Dusty Drawer · Harry Muheim · ss Collier’s May 3 1952
17 ·Drum Beat by Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #2 1960
21 · The Uses of Intelligence by "Matthew Gant" (Arnold Hano); 1952 (reprint: Sleuth Mystery Magazine Oct 1958)
33 · The Queen's Jewel by James Holding, 1964
44 · That Touch of Genius by William Sambrot (ss) Escapade Jan 1967
53 · The Crooked Road by Alex Gaby (ss) Argosy Jan 1958
69 · The Amateur by Michael Gilbert [Insp. (Supt.) Hazlerigg series], (ss) John Bull Nov 19 1949, as “Amateur in Violence”
80 · The Singing Pigeon by "Ross Macdonald" (Kenneth Millar) (ss) 1953, reprinted in Manhunt May 1964 (as by John Ross Macdonald)
114 · Justice Magnifique by Lawrence Treat (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1958
129 · Greedy Night by E. C. Bentley (ss) Parody Party, edited by Leonard Russell, Hutchinson 1936
141 · A Humanist by Romain Gary (ss) The Saturday Evening Post Oct 26 1963
147 · The Oblong Room by Edward D. Hoch [Captain Leopold series], (ss) The Saint Magazine Jul 1967
157 · Dead Man's Story by Howard Rigsby (ss) Argosy Aug 27 1938, as “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” (reprinted by Arthur in The Mysterious Traveler Magazine Nov 1951 under new title)
169 · The Janissaries of Emilion by Basil Copper (nv) The Eighth Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert van Thal (Pan 1967)
190 · Chinoiserie by Helen McCloy (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1946
AHP: Terror Time (Dell 1972) [can't find any page numbers for this one; I'm not sure, but would be surprised if the introduction wasn't reprinted here as well. TM]
South of Market by Joe Gores, first published as "Down and Out" (ss) Manhunt Jun 1959
Love Will Find a Way by David Alexander (ss) 1960
Retribution by Michael Zuroy (ss) Manhunt Apr 1961
Pool Party by "Andrew Benedict" (Robert Arthur) (ss) Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Oct 1969
A Taste for Murder by Jack Ritchie (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1963
The Twelve-Hour Caper by Mike Marmer (ss) Cosmopolitan May 1961
Death Wish by Lawrence Block (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Mar 1967
The White Hat by Sax Rohmer [Paul Harley series], (nv) The Story-teller Jun 1920 (Arthur had reprinted it in The Mysterious Traveler Magazine Mar 1952)
Hard Sell by "Craig Rice" [ghost written by Lawrence Block; John J. Malone series], (ss) Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #1 1960
A Twilight Adventure by Melville Davisson Post [Uncle Abner series], (ss) Metropolitan Magazine Apr 1914
Murder Matinee by Harold Q. Masur, ss 1946
Love Me, Love Me, Love Me by M.S. Waddell (aka Martin Waddell), (ss) The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert van Thal, Pan 1965
Special Handling by John Keefauver (ss) 1969 (possibly a story originally in the hardcover edition)
The Legend of Joe Lee by John D. MacDonald (ss) Cosmopolitan Oct 1964
Crooked Bone by Gerald Kersh (nv) The Saturday Evening Post Aug 10 1968
Soldier Key by Sterling E. Lanier [Brigadier Ffellowes series], (nv) The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Aug 1968
Yes, yes, but what of the stories? Well, the Howard Rigsby is very good indeed, and I can see why it went to Argosy rather than Weird Tales (Argosy could pay at least five times as much if they were of a mind to do so), involving a dogged agent of law enforcement who isn't going let decedence impede execution of his duty. Arnold Hano's story is another I've written about here before, due to its inclusion in a horrible-children anthology; it managed to be both anti-intellectual and anti-youth at the same time, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) presuming that a high IQ score allows for improbable hands-on supervillainy. I chose to be mildly offended on both counts, but apparently not only Arthur but the MWA representatives who edited and co-published Sleuth magazine were chuckling.
"The Dusty Drawer" is one of those stories where an overlooked drawer in a bank allows for hideaway larceny; the AHP: television series dramatized another story rather similar to this one, and I've read a half-dozen others over the years...this one is reasonably deft. I was reading "Greedy Night" before I'd actually heard of, much less read, Sayers or "Gaudy Night", but nonetheless enjoyed it, and the Basil Copper story was a fine introduction to his work, resolutely old-fashioned but not stuffy horror-fiction. "The Oblong Room" is almost certainly the most-reprinted of Edward Hoch's stories, or at very least was at one time, and one can see why...it runs relentlessly to its conclusion, verging on horror and getting at the root of horror, and perverse tragedy. John Keefauver and even more Mike Marmer were professional humorists (though perhaps Marmer's Lancelot Link tv series was less indicative of that than most of his work in literary and audio/visual matters), and there is no lack of gallows humor in this and other Arthur (and Masur) books, none of it more indicative of Avram Davidson's "the laugh with a little bubble of blood in it" than the Romain Gary story, one of those gathered shortly after magazine publication in the volume Hissing Tales. And, as you probably have noted by now, this, like the other AHP: volumes feature no lack of fantasy and horror, even a little sf, mixed in with the suspense and mystery fiction, and even a merely shadowy character study on occasion...since I didn't have half the book until recently, the not altogether dissimilar Judith Merril The Year's Best S-F annual for 1965, featuring 1964 stories for the most part, was my source for another Romain Gary and for this volume's John D. MacDonald fantasy, "The Legend of Joe Lee", a couple of years after I read the Dates with Death paperback...Dell, who were the primary force behind the Merril books except for several volumes where Simon & Schuster intrusively edited over Merril's shoulder, clearly liked eclectic anthologies. Sorry I missed the Joe Gores and Lawrence Block stories (both the latter) for so long...and there's very little in this book and its variations that isn't a good example of what the authors could do.
The British hardcover edition, above (possibly only offered through a book club). Below, the first UK paperback from A Month (not sure if they divided the stories as Dell did, or for that matter who at Dell was doing the splitting of the baby, or if they let Robert Arthur and Harold Masur do it themselves...that certainly would explain why presumably Arthur would replace the novels from some of te Random House hardcovers with stories from Arthur's YA anthologies for Random House, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, in some of the Dell paperback editions.
Image above, and some index assistance, from The Hitchcock Zone, as well as from ISFDB and particularly the FictionMags Index. The image below the back cover of AHP: Dates with Death. Frank Babics's Casual Debris (with some gaps and errors amid a very impressive lot of work) and the Internet Archive are always good to look at, as well.
And thanks as always to Patti Abbott for hosting FFB. Check here for more of today's books.
9 comments:
Just a coincidence, but I also came across A MONTH OF MYSTERY this month. I planned on reading it, but now with your brilliant review, I think A MONTH OF MYSTERY will sink down the READ REAL SOON stack. I hadn't realized some of the stories showed up in paperback, but it makes sense.
Too kind, George...I'm so wrapped up in my tardy creation of an index (there appears to be none online, though perhaps a bare-bones one in WorldCat that I haven't sussed out, and the bare-bones one in The Alfred Hitchcock Place, which does at least link to the other stories by the same authors in their other indices...that I've barely begun the actual review!
But All the Random House AHP books were reissued in two-paperback volumes by Dell...in sometimes deceptive packaging, as I've noted before, and, as also cited in previous FFBs, when Arthur would reprint a novel, Dell would usually replace it in their paperback editions with stories from the Random House YA anthologies Arthur was was also editing,,,since the likes of SOME OF YOUR BLOOD by Theodore Sturgeon hadn't seen US hardcover publication, at least, before Arthur put it in an AHP anthology...but Ballantine still had the rights and probably a paperback still in print...and Dell might not always have kept all their volumes in print...as I mention, I'm pretty sure I never saw the 2nd paperback out of A MONTH OF MYSTERY on stands.
Todd – Thanks for the post. I’ve got several old worn paperbacks of short stories under Alfred Hitchcock covers. They used to show up frequently in used book shops. I grabbed them for the authors’ featured, and usually paid for pennies for each. A bargain and a lot of fun.
Well, this is where I bring out the warning...there are at least four different kinds of "Hitchcock" anthology...
1. The adult anthologies that Don Ward (at Dell in the '40s) and presumably others (at Simon & Schuster and elsewhere) ghosted for Hitchcock before his tv series started. These are usually very good.
2. The adult anthologies that Robert Arthur (and in one instance Patricia Hitchcock/O'Connell) put together for Random House after the tv series began, and Bennett Cerf and/or someone saw a marketing opportunity. Happily, Pat Hitchcock wasn't too bad at it and Robert Arthur was great...until his rather early death in 1969, and Harold Masur was also great at it...till Hitchcock died. Peter Haining was also tapped to do some anthologies for UK publishers around the turn of the '70s, though one of those was apparently only published in the US, by Dell...Dell *really* liked being in the Hitchcock business, and they did the kind of two volume paperbacks of the Random House adult hardcovers discussed above.
This comment is so long it has to be broken into two, a la a Dell paperback reprint.
3. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine came on the scene in 1956, at about the same time as the RH hardcovers, also hoping for some tie-in benefit, and given it's still publishing, you could say they did it right. Dell started commissioning best-of-AHMM anthologies in the mid '60s, edited at last report by someone at SMLA, and the publishers packaged them along with their RH reprints. Sometimes throwing around titles in very confusing ways...the best-of the magazine volumes are good, but certainly less diverse than the Arthur/Masur Random House anthologies. But even some good, criminous horror pops up from the likes of C. B. Gilford at times. When the original publishers, H.S.D. Publications, sold AHMM to Davis Publications in 1975, Davis took control of the magazine reprint anthologies, even publishing a magazine called Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology in the same manner as they had been publishing Ellery Queen's Anthology as a companion to EQMM...a magazine that B. G. Davis had bought upon leaving Ziff-Davis to anchor his new company, almost two decades before. And the hardcover versions of the Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology issues were published, presumably mostly for collectors and libraries, by the Dial Press...which is to say, Dell.
4. Random House also decided to market "Hitchcock" anthologies to younger readers, and engaged kidlit specialist Muriel Fuller to do a first anthology, Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful, in 1961...good, but not quite getting too deep into the strange and engagingly scary, featuring instead long excerpts from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the like. Robert Arthur was given the job for the second such volume, AH's Ghostly Gallery, and they were off and running. The YA volumes were more thematic and slightly less diverse than the adult volumes, with such titles as AH's Sinister Spies and AH's Daring Detectives, but they were still very well edited, and featured some very handsome design and illustration (something that was far less a concern with the adult books). Arthur also began the AH and the Three Investigators series of young readers' mystery stories, writing the initial books and then having others do the work for hire...along with writing a book of solve-them-yourself mysteries for kids to market along with those. The Three Investigators has survived both Arthur and Hitchcock, and after AH's death, a new character was introduced to be the sort of mentor, if at times less distant, that AH had supposedly been in the early books...some of which, at least, were reissued with the new character written in. Viking and others have also done, for some reason usually abridged, paperbacks of the RH "Hitchcock" anthologies, including the the two Henry Veit edited after Arthur's death.
But it's hard to go too wrong with any of these, including the various forms of instant remainder the Hitchcock-branded anthologies have become...those usually drawn from the magazine, including Harold Masur's last "Hitchcock" antho, The Best of Mystery. One of Charles Ardai's first jobs, in co-op internship, was helping put together the Davis Publications...and eventually Dell Magazines (surprise!) anthologies drawn primarily from AHMM and EQMM.
There is actually a fifth series of Alfred Hitchcock anthologies as the French did theirs, exclusively for the local market. Noted crime writer, translator and critic Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe was the editor, using material mostly from AHMM but also sometimes EQMM. Since there was and still are today no outlet for crime shorts in France, the AH anthologies - be them the "original" or the "French" ones - were the only way for local readers to catch up with the state of the art in English-speaking countries. One of Endrèbe's final anthologies, published at the corner of this century, even had a story by a promising writer, one Charles Ardai.
Thanks, Xavier...I'll have to look into those...remarkable the French markets haven't supported a crime-fiction magazine or several the way that, say, FICTION flourished for decades as a fantastic-fiction magazine.
I'm thrilled to discover your site and your posts, Todd! I found A MONTH OF MYSTERY just last month in a used bookstore and promptly purchased it, but haven't yet dived in. Thanks so much for the cataloging and indexing that you're doing. It's great to bring mystery stories from previous decades back into the spotlight!
Thank you. It's a fine book...and I really did some work on this index...
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