...from the master of suspense...

This week, I read this. It is trashy and brilliant and lush. It is the antidote to heavy high brow lit. Yet, because it's old (dated Feb 1973) and has Alfred Hitchcock's blessing, it feels vintage and worthwhile.

I bought this in a bookshop in Porto Alegre in Brazil when we travelled through a couple of years ago. It was a heady combination of an impulse purchase. I love Hitchcock, films, biog... all associated links, I was desperately thirsty for all/any reading material (I'd even sunk to the desperate depths of swapping a book I'd read for the only English title in a hostel in Sao Paulo; Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons which I destroyed after reading - horrible, hateful, lazily written, nasty, self-absorbed, sexist, vile novel that it is) And I have a massive crush on anything mid century.. so this just ticked a lot of boxes. I didn't actually get round to reading it all at the time (found a copy of brilliant Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible) - but managed to secret squirrel Hitch away in my rucksack and bring it back home where it belonged. It is pure pulp fiction. And I love it.