Most of the Alfred Hitchcock fiction anthologies that I have purchased were found at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, but this one I purchased online. You can probably guess why: it has a lovely cover with skeletons.
These are the stories in the anthology:
- Once upon a Bank Floor... by James Holding, Jr
- The Egg Head by Rog Phillips
- Each Night He Pulled the Trigger by Robert Edmond Alter
- The Waiting Game by Pat Stadley
- Destruction is Always Arranged by Gilbert Ralston
- The Happy Death by John Cortez
- The Sweater by Richard O. Lewis
- IQ — 184 by Fletcher Flora
- Kill, If You Want Me! by Richard Deming
- Antique by Hal Ellson
- Mrs. Gilly and the Gigolo by Mary L. Roby
- This Day's Evil by Jonathan Craig
- Private and Confidential by Diane Frazer
- Never Come Back by Robert Colby
This anthology was published in 1969. The stories in it were originally published between 1957 and 1967. I read the first story in the book and I liked it very much. I hope that the rest of the stories are just as good.
"Once upon a Bank Floor... " by James Holding, Jr.
This story was fun, upbeat, and had a great ending.
Two men are on an airplane trip, seated next to each other. One has a mystery story magazine for reading on the plane trip. The other man works for a bank; he tells a story about earlier in his banking career when the bank was robbed. It was in the early morning and he was alone in the bank at the time. I don't want to go into more details for fear of spoiling the story.
I don't know anything about the author, James Holding, Jr., although the name is familiar. Checking the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki, he had a good number of stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and various Hitchcock fiction anthologies. I would welcome more information on this author, if anyone knows more.
