cover image Alfred Hitchcock's Home Sweet Homicide: Stories from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

Alfred Hitchcock's Home Sweet Homicide: Stories from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

Alfred Hitchcock. Walker & Company, $18.95 (228pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-5798-2

These stories from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine , all loosely centered on home and family, feature some of the top names in the mystery field. Among the gems are Joseph Hansen's ``The Owl in the Oak,'' about the murder of a sweet old lady who turns out to have been a monster, and the story of a wife who tries to have it all but learns that men are not to be trusted (``Domestic Intrigue'' by Donald E. Westlake). Patricia Moyes's funny tale, ``A Young Man Called Smith,'' about two suspicious young men, appears to telegraph its ending but delights with a surprising twist. The hard-boiled school is well represented by Lawrence Block's ``A Candle for the Bag Lady'' and Loren Estleman's ``Greektown,'' in which Amos Walker tracks down a man driven to violence against women and uncovers a family's secret shame. Other entries are from Marcia Muller, Charlotte MacLeod, Nancy Pickard, Herbert Resnicow, John F. Suter (a most unusual story about punishment and revenge), Ralph McInerny and John Lutz. Not a bad one in the lot. (Nov.)