posted on 28 Aug 2024

It’s all about branding when it comes to the Master of Suspense

If, like me, you’re constantly trawling every shop you can think of for bargain bookish finds, the law of probability decrees that you’re inevitably going to come across something that brings a smile to your face every now and again. A recent find certainly qualified as an unexpected delight – four hardback anthologies from the 60s and 70s bearing the name of the cinematic Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

These collections are packed with the shortest of short stories – nothing longer than 8-10 pages – that all have a bit of plot twist, a bit of suspense or even a suggestion of the supernatural. These aren’t by any stretch of the imagination, masterpieces of the short story art form but, then again, they’re not meant to be. They’re there to offer an hour's diversionary and unchallenging reading of the sort you might have come across in a monthly magazine. They’re not quite Weird Tales territory and not quite real crime material – they are somewhere between the two.

These collections are what they are because of pure, unabashed marketing opportunism: get hold of some relatively cheaply written but not risible fiction from jobbing writers who know how to turn a moderately suspenseful (or sometimes tongue-in-cheek suspenseful) story and brand them with a popular name the public will be drawn to.

And, back in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies there just wasn’t a bigger name in film suspense, clever cinematic shockers or movie cliff-hangers than Alfred Hitchcock – so famous and well-renowned that his name had become synonymous with thrills of the kind he delivered in his films, Psycho or The Birds. But it won’t take you long to suss-out that our Mr Hitchcock, short of lending the use of his name, had absolutely nothing to do with the literally tens of anthologies than were pumped out to fill a reader’s time on train or plane journeys or provide a diversion when there wasn’t much on the t.v.

Despite the fact that Hitchcock was British, his fame in the USA was equal to or even greater than it was in his home nation. So, using his name as the banner heading on the jackets is a stroke of marketing genius. As the creators of the website called The Hitchcock Zone note:

“Although many of the anthologies included an introduction from Hitchcock, most sources agree that the director had minimal, if any, involvement with the books and that the introductions were typically ghostwritten by the publisher's in-house editor assigned to compile each collection. As with Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Hitchcock simply licensed his name for use by the publisher.”

The assiduous work of the Zone compilers also list the full roster of publications carrying Hitchcock’s name from 1941 through to the mid-60s when the British paperback editions started being edited by Peter Haining – who will be a name familiar to anyone who is an avid reader of anthologies of spooky tales.

As well as splashing Hitchcock’s name around, publishers were also pretty gung-ho with their use of lurid titles for the books. Two of the four I found have titles that must be perilously close to breaching trades description legislation: Tales to Scare You Stiff, I don’t think so; or Stories To Be Read With the Door Locked, hardly. But that’s the marketing game of course.

You won’t find anything here to offend and if you’re in the right mood some of the stories will pass your time pleasantly enough. They’re not tremendously difficult to find on the internet and not expensive – and if you’re the right vintage they might just be nostalgic.

 

Terry Potter

August 2024