Friday, October 17, 2025
Review: "Alfred Hitchcock's Speak of the Devil"
Book published in December, 1975.
The following text contains spoilers for all stories in this anthology.
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1971.
Jonathan Craig — Wikipédia (in French)
The protagonist is a middle-aged man who decides to visit his hometown after being away for a long time. The only problem is that he had taken part in a collective rape followed by death while he lived there. And there is someone in wait there to give him his due punishment.
(I didn't consider it a great story. It's quite violent and straightforward, and thus may linger in the memory longer than others with a more refined plot. While it seems to be an extremely moralistic story, it actually is offering implicit advice to criminals: never return to the place of your crime.)
"Suspicion, Suspicion", by Richard O. Lewis
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 1972.
Richard Oral Lewis was born in Eddyville, Iowa, in 1906 and died in Sabula, Iowa, in 1994. He had a wife and a son, both now dead. He gives further information about himself on the pages of Amazing Stories (February, 1940) and Imaginative Tales (January, 1956).
The plot concerns a woman who is suspected by the townsfolk of having murdered her husband for the insurance. But it so happens that her boss the pharmacy owner was the real culprit. He had earlier murdered his own wife and nobody suspected a thing. Then he tampered with the woman's husband's prescriptions, killing him. He then married the woman, throwing further suspicions on her. Then he poisoned her, and married his young new assistant.
(It's a mildly interesting yet far-fetched story with a slight touch of feminism it its implication that in the eyes of the common folk a man is always above suspicion, whereas a woman is always a suspect.)
"Pep Talk", by Syd Hoff
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1970.
This is about a mother who is talking to her teenage son about his day at football practice. The son tells her he is no good at football, and that the coach chose another player over him. His mother reproaches him for being such a bad loser, and gives him a lecture in sportsmanship. She also tells him to phone the other player and wish him good luck, and also to invite him over for a sandwich. While the boy is on the phone, she picks up from the garbage a sandwich which she suspected of being contaminated with bacteria.
(This is rather short and unpretentious; its only ambition is to tell a good joke.)
"The Tool", by Fletcher Flora
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1964.
Fletcher Flora — Wikipédia (in French)
The main characters are a woman, her husband, her daughter from a previous marriage or relationship, and the woman's lover, who is their neighbor. The daughter does not get along with her stepfather. The girl hides his rifle, and when he commands her to give it back to him, she shoots him and kills him. She then says the neighbor gave her the bullet and told her it was a blank. (Note: through a previous conversation between the neighbor and the girl we know he didn't give her any bullet). The police detective comes and questions the mother and the daughter; he then goes over to the neighbor's and questions him. At the mother's house, she confronts her daughter and asks her who gave her the bullet (this shows the reader that the mother had no part in the crime). The daughter sticks to her version of things. The mother then says that the neighbor is gone.
(This is a well-crafted crime story. One commenter on the web said it was "open ended", but it's nothing of the sort. As I have explained, we know that the daughter plotted the whole thing because the author makes it clear that both the neighbor and the mother are innocent. As for the title, I suppose it refers to the neighbor, who was used by the girl; on the other hand, in the slang sense of tool meaning irritating, he could be referring to the girl.)
"Who's Innocent?", by Lawrence Treat (real name: Lawrence Arthur Goldstone)
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 1959.
It was republished in 'Alfred Hitchcock's Crime Watch' (June 1984).
The main characters are a country doctor, a woman who moves next door to him, her teenage daughter and her absentee husband. The daughter starts dating a poor but ambitious boy. She concurrently dates a rich boy and asks him to set up the other boy in a business of his own. The rich boy gets angry and even a little violent with the girl. The doctor comes over and gives the girl a sedative. Later, he wrests a gun from the gardener, who wants to kill the aggressor. The gardener breaks his leg in the process and has to be hospitalized. The mother crosses paths with the rich boy while in town and slaps him; then she calms down and asks to meet with him later. That night, the daughter goes to a party. A storm is raging. The doctor notices two cars near the woman's house, one parked in the driveway and the other one leaving. He sees the rich boy in the front porch, arguing with the woman. Then, as the first car still isn't leaving, the doctor gets curious and comes over. He finds the rich boy lying dead and the gardener's gun next to the body; he picks it up. The police investigates. A few days later, the woman calls the doctor over; her husband, an actor, is in the house. The husband claims he did it. After he is gone, the woman tells the doctor it's just an act. The doctor thought the woman did it but, when he confronts her about it, she replies that she saw him that night outside her house and inferred he did it. And the husband also couldn't have done it, because he didn't know about the gardener's cabin where the gun was. And then they wonder whether the daughter did it: she could have sneaked out of the party, gone to the cabin, and grabbed the gun. But she didn't do it: she had asked her boyfriend (the poor one) to come to the cabin to fix a radio; he saw the gun and took it. He was the murderer.
(Complication is used humorously in this story. Note the similarity in set-up with the previous story, "The Tool"; both have a married woman with a teenage daughter and a lover who lives next door.)
"Heir to Murder", by Ed Lacy (real name: Leonard S. Zinberg)
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 1967.
A private detective is hired by a lawyer to find a missing heir. He had been located in France and, after being contacted, flied to the U.S., but his plane crashed. He was identified as one of the survivors, and taken to a hospital. He phoned a young woman from there, and departed with her, disappearing again. The detective finds the young woman's address through her phone number in the hospital switchboard records, and asks a detective friend of his to stake out her house. Later, posing as a phone repairman, he bugs her phone and places the recording device in the car of the friend who is doing the stakeout. Later, the detective phones her and asks her about the missing heir; she replies that she doesn't know anyone by that name. He rejoins his friend and the latter says she phoned a guy who was staying in a hotel. The detective goes to the hotel and talks to him: it's the supposed heir, who says he doesn't want the inheritance. The detective then phones the lawyer and tells him where the supposed heir is at. The detective finds out that the young woman's husband is listed among the dead in the plane crash. He was identified by a cigarette lighter with his name on it in one of the charred bodies. At night, the detective heads for the young woman's house in order to retrieve his transmitter. As he approached the house, he notices police cars and a crowd in front of it: the young woman was found in a hotel room next to the supposed heir's corpse and the murder weapon. Later, the detective plays the tape with her recorded phone calls. She is talking with the supposed heir. It turns out he is in fact her husband, who supposedly died in the plane crash. He tells her they are going to be rich. In a second call, he is in a different hotel; they talk, then there is the sound of a shot and the call is disconnected. The detective then arranges a meeting with the lawyer and accuses him of killing the supposed heir; the lawyer was stealing from the inheritance money and tried to stall the inheritance proceedings until his uncle died and bequeathed him enough money to restore what he stole. The supposed heir's death would stall things further. He didn't know the supposed heir was in reality the young woman's husband who faked his own death in the plane crash so that his wife could collect his G.I. insurance and sue the airline company. After the detective tells him all that, the lawyer pulls out his gun, but the detective warns him that he has a transmitter in the glove compartment which is broadcasting their conversation to police cars; they are soon surrounded by them. The lawyer threatens to use the detective as shield; the latter tries to take possession of the gun and is shot, but is wearing a bulletproof vest.
(Like the previous story, this is a wildly complicated plot, but this one is also wildly implausible.)
"Beginner's Luck", by Richard Hardwick
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 1962.
Richard Holmes Hardwick, Jr. (b. Georgia, U.S.A., 1923 - d. Georgia, U.S.A., 1975); sometimes published as Rick Holmes. Obituary.
A man receives an envelope at work sent by a colleague. Inside, there is a letter and another envelope. The letter says that, should the colleague fail to contact him until a specified date and hour, he should mail the inner envelope to a named journalist. The man instead opens the other envelope and finds that it contains documents incriminating their boss. He infers that his colleague had been blackmailing their boss, and decides to take his place as blackmailer. He mails the envelope to a fictitious person, with instructions to deliver the package to the journalist in case no one claims it after a specified date. Soon afterwards, he hears of the colleague's death, in what looks like a car accident. Upon returning to his apartment, the man finds some goons in it, who demand that he gives them the envelope. Since he refuses, they beat him. After a phone call, they leave. The man goes to see his boss, and tries to blackmail him for a certain money amount. The boss refuses and offers a smaller sum, which the man refuses. The boss says that he will kill himself if he is exposed, and that he will leave instructions to have the man killed if that happens. The man is later approached by the boss's wife, who proposes they meet later. The man meets his boss again at his yacht, and gets beat up again by one of his goons. Then he goes to meet his boss's wife, who takes him to her "hideout". She throws a party, which lasts for several days. The man finds out that the woman is actually trying to expose her husband's crimes so that he commits suicide and she gets the inheritance. He infers that it was she who killed his colleague. He leaves in a hurry, but finds out that he lost track of time and the envelope was already on its way to be delivered to the journalist. That means that his boss is on his way to committing suicide, after which, as per his instructions, he will be assassinated. The woman will get the inheritance. The man decides to go to his apartment and drink himself to sleep, so as not to notice when his killers arrive.
(One of the better stories in this collection; very tense reading.)
"Two Days in Organville", by Edward D. Hoch
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, February 1973.
After a magazine reporter dies from a supposed accident while doing a story in a small town, another reporter -- this time someone who grew up in that town -- is sent there to finish the story. His assignment is to interview a minister who claims to have found a hymn written by Thomas Aquinas. The reporter's former girlfriend is now married to the local newspaper owner. The reporter finds out that the hymn is a forgery, and begins to suspect of foul play in the other reporter's death by a train -- the city's main business is organ manufacturing and the find would be a tremendous publicity stunt. His initial suspicion falls on the newspaper owner. It turns out the minister's wife is the possible culprit -- she had indeed confronted the other reporter at the site of the accident but is not sure whether she pushed him or not.
(Well written, but with a weak plot.)
"The Sonic Boomer", by William Brittain
First published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, February 1973.
A scientist from Albania claims he has developed a gun which is capable of blasting any target simply by emitting a sort of ray. He offers to sell it to the Americans. Two agents, one experienced and the other a rookie, are sent to the remote location in Canada where he is hidden. He does a demonstration of the gun for the agents and afterwards destroys it. He says he will build another if the Americans offer him asylum. Back in the U.S., in a conference with their boss, the experienced agent explains to the rookie that the demonstration had been a sham: the targets had been chosen by the scientist and they had actually been blown up with explosives previously placed on them. The detonation was performed by an accomplice of the scientist, upon a signal from him. The scientist was planning to steal military secrets from the U.S. while he feigned to build his weapon.
(This story departs somewhat from the usual stuff in Alfred Hitchcock's anthologies in that it belongs to the genre of espionage. It's enjoyable, but the ending is too easy to guess. Note: I couldn't figure out the meaning of "a plastic souvenir / purchased in a Hong Kong shop is suddenly the key to / our expenditures to obtain it". I conjecture that there is a line missing where I placed the second slash. I will have to wait for the anthology The Man Who Wrote Mysteries, which is slated to appear in 2026, to find out.)
"No Escape", by C. B. Gilford
First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1969.
This story is set in a park, on a cold and cloudy day. While driving around, the patrolman notices an empty Chevy parked at the end of a trail. A while later he sees an empty Mustang parked near it. He is slightly worried. Meanwhile, a woman is walking along the trail. She suddenly runs into two young men who were returning. Taken by panic, she passes them hurriedly. The two men turn around and start to follow her. She is terrified and, after a confrontation, she drops her purse and flees into the woods, which are in a descending slope that ends in a pond. The men pursue her and she decides to go into the cold water. She swims to the middle of the pond, but one of the men walks around to the other bank. They start by throwing mud balls at her, then turn to rocks; they hit her head. Bleeding, and with her body beginning to freeze from the cold water, she decides to swim to the bank. She manages to reach the bank, but when she gets there she dies. The two men dump her body in the pond, with rocks inserted under her clothes so it will not float. They throw her purse into the pond, but in mid-air it opens and some of the contents fall off. The two men decide that one of them will take the victim's car, so that there is no trace of the woman left in the park. They encounter the patrolman who is waiting by the cars. He senses something strange when they take separate cars; they don't look like they could afford a new Mustang; also, the man in the victim's car had to adjust the position of the car seat. He lets them go. Before closing the park, he decides to check to see whether there is anyone still there. He goes through the trail and, since he had noticed that the guy he talked to had wet socks, he decides to check the pond. He finds footprints and notices an object floating on the pond, which he collects -- it's an eyebrow pencil. He returns to his car, phones his deputy, gives him the license plate numbers, and orders him to arrest the two guys for swimming in the pond, and to keep them in jail until he has dragged the pond.
Gripping, well-written story.
"The Chess Partner", by Theodore Mathieson
First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1971.
Theodore William Mathieson (San Francisco, California, U.S.A., 1913 - Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1995) was a teacher and a writer. For further information about him, click here.
A man sets a mechanism in his house consisting of a cord attached to the trigger of a gun which is fixed in front of a hole in a wall, the purpose of which is killing his chess partner, who had made advances on a woman about whom the protagonist entertained some vague romantic thoughts but could not make any decisive move. Aside from that, the protagonist was also prey to an inferiority complex due to his partner's superior performance in chess. On the fateful day, however, the protagonist wins, and after the game his partner delivers to him a letter from their female acquaintance stating her preference for the protagonist over his partner. He changes his mind about the murder, but his boot gets caught in the trigger-activating cord, thus accidentally killing his partner.
One of the weaker stories in this collection, rather depressing, but reasonably well written, whose purported philosophical point is expressed in the last sentence, which remarked that the protagonist at last knew "the meaning of utter involvement".
"Dr. Zinnkopf's Devilish Device", by Edwin P. Hicks
First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1967.
The FBI puts a man in charge of approaching a spy and accepting a money offer from him in exchange for the plans of a sound-emitting device capable of breaking glass in a vast neighboring area. The FBI agent is instructed to go beyond that and offer a working model of the device to the spy. The model is delivered fully assembled except for the trigger, which must be assembled in the buying country. As it turns out, the FBI's intent is to cause a major catastrophe in the enemy country for which the spy is working when they test the device. Subsequently, the U.S. would activate a second device capable of remotely destroying the original one.
The second espionage story in this collection, also about a weapon (the other being The Sonic Boomer). This is the weaker one, and probably the weakest story in this collection, very predictable and unexciting.
"Fat Jow and the Dragon Parade", by Robert Alan Blair
First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1969.
I haven't found much about this author. I guess, from the setting of his Fat Jow series, that he is from California. Here's a list of his short stories; there is also a one-act play titled Man of the House whose author has the same name, but I don't know whether they are the same person.
The story in this book, set in San Francisco's Chinatown, features a shop owner (the title character) and an orphan boy to whom he is a sort of stepfather. The plot begins at the titular parade, during which a gangster is murdered. After that incident, the little boy tells Fat Jow that he knew a beautiful young woman when he was at a refugee camp, and that she had been taken away by the gangster, presumably to be sold as a factory worker or, more likely, given her beauty, as a prostitute. When the police detective decides to interview the deceased man's widow, he asks Fat Jow to come along as an interpreter. In the widow's house, Fat Jow spots a beautiful young woman who is working as a maid. After the detective leaves, Fat Jow stays a little longer with the widow and she reveals that the young woman was the gangster's live-in mistress. Fat Jow suspects that she is the one whom his little friend told him about, and he arranges a dinner in the widow's house to bring them together. Meanwhile, it is revealed that the murder weapon had been a dart-throwing blowgun. Fat Jow visits a museum where they hold some Chinese items donated by the deceased man. Among the items in display there is a blowgun and a dart. The museum curator reveals that part of the collection is still with the widow, including two additional darts. The dinner happens, and the young woman is indeed the little boy's earlier friend. Later, the young woman reveals to Fat Jow that she is pregnant of her former lover. Fat Jow talks to the widow again and she reveals to him that the gangster wanted the young woman to make an abortion. The widow confesses that she murdered her husband with a dart which she manually inserted in his neck. She did it because she sympathized with the young woman, whom she came to consider as a daughter; the young woman wanted to keep her baby because that would prevent her from being deported back to China. The widow is now considering suicide. Fat Jow persuades her to abandon that idea, and vows not to tell the police about her crime.
This story has a simpler plot than most on this book. It's more of an anthropological study set in an immigrant community than a proper mystery story, as the mystery elements are more of a plot mover. It was a nice reading. I just wish I knew more about the author.
"Calculated Alibi", by Richard Deming
Richard Deming — Wikipédia (in French)
First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1967.
In this one, a woman and her husband's secretary are lovers and plot to kill him. The lover is sent by his employer on a trip to meet a New York agent about the publication of his memoirs. The wife plans the whole thing thus: the lover flies to New York on Sunday evening, registers at the hotel, leaves the hotel undetected, catches a plane back, kills the husband, catches another plane to New York, reenters the hotel from where he got out, and proceeds as if he had spent the night at the hotel. Meanwhile, the wife will feign a stomachache, go to a hospital and spend the night there. As expected, it goes sour as the husband had been monitoring the two lovers' conversations with a tape recorder (which, incidentally, he was using to dictate his memoirs to). Also, he drugged the wife and placed her on his bed, so that she gets killed in his place.
This is an easy read but also a testimony to how dated crime stories from not so long ago have become. Today, it isn't trivial to book a flight under a false identity. Also, there are cameras everywhere. And so on. One possible flaw which was probably damning even at the time of the story's publication is that the husband would probably be convicted along with the lover, because his actions purposefully led to his wife's death. That is murder, of course, and it wouldn't matter to the police that she had planned to murder him. P.S. On second thought, maybe the husband could get away with it. He wouldn't tell the police that he knew they were planning to kill him. His version could be, for example, that his wife took a sleeping pill because she had a headache, and slept in his bed because she found it more comfortable. He would say that he heard the shots while in another room and fetched his gun to confront the shooter.
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My overall assessment of this volume is positive. Only a minority of stories are really what one would call masterpieces, but all the stories are readable, and at least moderately entertaining.
Thursday, October 16, 2025
A influência na afluência
Publicado originalmente em 7 de outubro de 2025.
Vou contar aqui uma história que espero edifique e inspire, emocione e enterneça -- e, sobretudo, ensine!
É a história do seu Dirso, cujo avô veio lá da Itália e sempre foi muito trabalhador, como aliás seus descendentes até agora. Seu grande sonho era que seus filhos não tivessem que dar tão duro na vida quanto ele, e se possível que fossem muito ricos. A família dele, os Nario, era de gente muito humilde, mas dizia-se que eles não eram estúpidos e um dia escapariam de sua condição inferior.
Quando nasceu o primeiro filho do seu Dirso, este, achando que devia começar por dar-lhe um nome propiciador de boa fortuna, chamou-lhe Emílio. Após alguns anos, o menino ainda não havia demonstrado nenhuma habilidade especial, muito pelo contrário. Seu Dirso achou que era hora de ter um segundo filho. Quando este nasceu, recebeu o nome de Abílio. Seu Dirso pôs todas suas esperanças nele, já que o anterior revelava-se uma criança medíocre, na melhor das hipóteses.
Infelizmente para o seu Dirso, seu segundo filho mostrou-se ainda pior que o primeiro.
Um dia, seu Dirso teve que ir ao consulado italiano por causa de uns documentos, e lá teve uma grande surpresa. Quando as autoridades brasileiras fizeram a documentação do avô do seu Dirso, eles cometeram um erro: seu sobrenome não era Nario, mas Tario.
No caminho de casa, seu Dirso ia matutando, até que descobriu a causa de todo o seu infortúnio.
Moral da primeira parte de nossa história: é difícil tornar-se milionário (e bilionário muito mais), principalmente quando se nasce otário.
Mas a história não para aí. Seu Dirso, agora de posse de informações corretas, resolveu ter mais um filho. Estava já meio velhinho, assim como sua moglie, mas resolveu tentar assim mesmo. E conseguiu. Só que desta vez veio uma menina.
Cansado de fazer escolhas erradas, desta vez seu Dirso deixou para sua esposa a escolha do nome. Ademais, sendo a filha mulher, era natural que a mãe tivesse a última palavra.
A esposa do seu Dirso não era descendente de italianos. Seu nome era Sofia de Oliveira. Depois de casada, ela geralmente abreviava o sobrenome de solteira com a inicial.
Dona Sofia gostava muito de cinema e de novelas de televisão. Conhecia muitos nomes de atrizes. Alguns deles ela achava muito chiques. Escolheu para sua filha dois nomes que sempre a fascinaram: Estelle Yoná.
E não é que a escolha da dona Sofia deu sorte? A filha, ao contrário dos irmãos, demonstrava ao crescer uma inteligência acima do normal. Começou a ganhar dinheiro precocemente, e assim a família deixou sua condição humilde, podendo desfrutar de confortos nunca antes sonhados.
Ninguém sabia muito bem como a filhinha ganhava todo esse dinheiro, mas quem se importava? Tudo ia bem, e todos estavam felizes.
Infelizmente, a felicidade durou pouco, pois um dia a polícia bateu na porta do seu Dirso, e levou a família inteira para a cadeia.
Moral da segunda (e última) parte da história: para algumas pessoas, o único jeito de ficar rico depressa é... vamos ver se o leitor adivinha.
