Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense

Starred review from April 3, 2006
Landrigan, AHMM
's editor-in-chief, has done an outstanding job of selecting 34 short stories to represent the half-century of her magazine's existence. The roster of authors is close to an all-star roster of American mystery talent, with many names, such as Lawrence Block, Evan Hunter and Sara Paretsky, familiar to a wide audience. The selections span the range of the genre, from gritty noir to historical. The writing is uniformly excellent, making it hard to single out individual stories for praise, but Donald E. Westlake's "Good Night! Good Night!" about a murder victim's search for his killer, which echoes Joel Townsley Rogers classic novel The Stopped Clock
, and Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective tale, "Death of a Nobody," are standouts. Perhaps this volume's greatest virtue is providing a showcase for the gifts of lesser-known writers such as Stephen Wasylyk and Henry Slesar. This will be a must-have for all serious mystery readers.