A wonderfully lurid little anthology of crime, suspense and macabre short fiction.

This One Will Kill You gathers fourteen stories selected under Alfred Hitchcock’s name, with an introduction by Hitchcock and contributions from writers including Jonathan Craig, Richard Deming, Jack Ritchie, James Holding, John Lutz, Henry Slesar, Ed Lacy, Robert Edmond Alter and Fletcher Flora. This New English Library edition appeared in 1972, following the original American Dell publication in 1971.

The collection sits squarely in the Hitchcock paperback-anthology world. There's all the cheese we love, the murder plots, bad bargains, domestic menace, criminal ingenuity and people discovering, generally several minutes too late, that whatever clever arrangement they have constructed contains them too. Meddlin' kids, et al. Titles such as “Six Skinny Coffins,” “The Misopedist,” “The Shunned House,” “Don’t Call It Murder” and “Voice in the Night” give a fairly accurate indication of proceedings. It is also a particularly good example of the mass-market Hitchcock anthologies that circulated through the 1960s and 70s, where his name effectively became its own small genre. 

New English Library, London, 1972. First NEL paperback edition, December 1972. Paperback. Noticeable edge and corner wear, rubbing and creasing to covers; pages age-toned throughout. Binding appears firm and contents clean. Good condition.