ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked

Another corpulent collection of detective and horror stories, most of them with a turnabout dose. Among the tales of terror: Jerry Jacobson's movable funeral lures the soon-to-be-deceased into cross-country pursuit; Charles Runyon replaces parts of a dismembered manikin with some real ones; Roald Dahl pays a sticky tribute to fatherhood which in this case is unpleasantly wedded to bee-hood; Harlan Ellison reworks the old chestnut about an actor too closely associated with his roles; Theodore Sturgeon writes amusingly as always about ghosts and magic potions; Alan Dean Foster finds something sinister in one man's pipe tobacco; and there's a double murder solution when a Garden Club visits Nero Wolfe's orchids. Not to forget contributions by Robert L. Fish, Jack Ritchie, John D. MacDonald, Joseph N. Gores and Bill Pronzini. All provide better than reliable entertainment.