ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S TALES TO MAKE YOUR TEETH CHATTER

An undistinguished gathering of 28 stories from the Fifties, Sixties, and early Seventies: lots of cops and robbers, wife-killers, and limp twists. The best work here comes from veterans of the downbeat, ironic mode--Jack Ritchie's neat study of real terror engendered by an annual mock-murder in academia, Donald E. Westlake's tale of a would-be blackmailer's terminal timidity, Edward D. Hoch's triple-twister about the lady, the jewel thief, and the undercover cop; Lawrence Block and Frank Sisk, however, turn in surprisingly weak examples of the genre. And the rest is generally tired and flat, with some dated psychopathology, a retread of Christie's ABC Murders gimmick, and a long variation on the city-slicker-in-a-Southern-jail nightmare. Pretty much the bottom of the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine barrel.