tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post8663431088606184962..comments2024-03-27T22:39:08.396-04:00Comments on Sweet Freedom: FFB: Robert Arthur, editor: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: A MONTH OF MYSTERY (Random House 1969) (and paperback variants such as AHP: DATES WITH DEATH, Dell 1972)Todd Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-19916966677939086562019-01-26T15:31:29.488-05:002019-01-26T15:31:29.488-05:00Thank you. It's a fine book...and I really did...Thank you. It's a fine book...and I really did some work on this index...Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-6833488253141382382019-01-26T12:18:50.400-05:002019-01-26T12:18:50.400-05:00I'm thrilled to discover your site and your po...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!Jason Halfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15247128155560891888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-47921656782651342092019-01-26T11:00:16.846-05:002019-01-26T11:00:16.846-05:00Thanks, Xavier...I'll have to look into those....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.Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-51575326480376412522019-01-26T08:23:12.280-05:002019-01-26T08:23:12.280-05:00There is actually a fifth series of Alfred Hitchco...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. Xavierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05702919450638993709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-44671220401418590472019-01-25T13:16:30.895-05:002019-01-25T13:16:30.895-05:003. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine came on...3. <i>Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine</i> 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-<i>AHMM</i> 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 <i>AHMM</i> to Davis Publications in 1975, Davis took control of the magazine reprint anthologies, even publishing a magazine called <i>Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology</i> in the same manner as they had been publishing <i>Ellery Queen's Anthology</i> as a companion to <i>EQMM</i>...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 <i>Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology</i> issues were published, presumably mostly for collectors and libraries, by the Dial Press...which is to say, Dell. <br /><br />4. Random House also decided to market "Hitchcock" anthologies to younger readers, and engaged kidlit specialist Muriel Fuller to do a first anthology, <i>Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful</i>, in 1961...good, but not quite getting too deep into the strange and engagingly scary, featuring instead long excerpts from <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</i> and the like. Robert Arthur was given the job for the second such volume, <i>AH's Ghostly Gallery</i>, and they were off and running. The YA volumes were more thematic and slightly less diverse than the adult volumes, with such titles as <i>AH's Sinister Spies</i> and <i>AH's Daring Detectives</i>, 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.<br /><br />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, <i>The Best of Mystery</i>. 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 <i>AHMM</i> and <i>EQMM</i>.Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-89433195915644426282019-01-25T13:16:16.761-05:002019-01-25T13:16:16.761-05:00Well, this is where I bring out the warning...ther...Well, this is where I bring out the warning...there are at least four different kinds of "Hitchcock" anthology...<br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />This comment is so long it has to be broken into two, a la a Dell paperback reprint.Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-37238977936520906192019-01-25T12:26:33.409-05:002019-01-25T12:26:33.409-05:00Todd – Thanks for the post. I’ve got several old w...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.Elgin Bleeckerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08417587392887691664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-21444944117923065032019-01-25T09:15:57.246-05:002019-01-25T09:15:57.246-05:00Too kind, George...I'm so wrapped up in my tar...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!<br /><br />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 Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8525415828746712027.post-25816877686695214222019-01-25T09:06:39.874-05:002019-01-25T09:06:39.874-05:00Just a coincidence, but I also came across A MONTH...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.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04546161337366365635noreply@blogger.com