Peter Haining – Murder On The Menu

Peter Haining (ed.) – Murder On The Menu: A Gourmet Guide To Death (Chancellor 1993: originally Souvenir, 1991)

Cover design: Slatter-Anderson

Peter Haining – Introduction

I. Specialities de la Maison: Stories By Some Famous Authors

Stanley Ellin – The Speciality Of The House
Ruth Rendell – Bribery And Corruption
Paul Gallico – Chef d’Oeuvre
Oliver La Farge – La Specialite de M Duclos
L. P. Hartley – Three, or Four, for Dinner
Gaston Leroux – A Terrible Tale
Damon Runyon – So You Won’t Talk!
Patricia Highsmith – Sauce for the Goose
P. D. James – A Very Commonplace Murder

II. Entrees Historigues: Tales From The Culinary Past.

August Derleth – A Dinner at Imola
Robert Bloch – The Feast in the Abbey
Alphonse Daudet – The Three Low Masses
Alexander Pushkin – The Coffin-Maker
Washington Irving – Guests from Gibbet Island
Richard Dehan – The Compleat Housewife
Walter Besant & James Rice – The Case of Mr Lucraft
G. B. Stern – The Man who Couldn’t Taste Pepper
Roger Zelazny – Final Dining

III. Just Desserts. A Section Of Detective Cases

Agatha Christie – Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds
H. C. Bailey – The Long Dinner
Nicholas Blake – The Assassins’ Club
Roy Vickers – Dinner for Two
Michael Gilbert – A Case for Gourmets
Lawrence G. Blochman – Rum for Dinner
Georges Simenon – Under the Hammer
Rex Stout – Poison a la Carte
Roald Dahl – Lamb to the Slaughter

Blurb:
Murder On The Menu is a mouth-watering collection of short stories from the masters of mystery, where food and death meet with devastating effect.

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Anon – The Man in Black

Anon – The Man in Black: Macabre Stories from Fear on Four (BBC, 1990)

Foreword – The Man In Black

William F. Harvey – The Beast with Five Fingers
Graeme Fife – Snipe 3909
David Buck – The Dead Drummer (Adapted by Haydn Middleton from an original radio script.)
Stephen Dunstone – Fat Andy
Katherine Nicholas – The Dispossessed Daughter
Stanley Ellin – The Specialty of the House
E. F. Benson – The Face
James Saunders – A Child Crying
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Roald Dahl – William and Mary
Bert Coules – Every Detail But One
J. C. W. Brook – The Snowman Killing
Nick Warburton – His Last Card
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Gwen Cherrell – Dreaming of Thee
Stephen Gallagher – By the River, Fontainebleau
Elizabeth Bowen – Hand in Glove
Bert Coules – The Journey Home
Robert Westall – St. Austin Friars
Martyn Wade – Soul Searching
Nick Warburton – Music Lovers
William Ingram – Mind Well the Tree
John Wyndham – Survival
James Saunders – Day at the Dentist’s

I don’t have a copy but a quick scrutiny of the contents suggests this as a thoughtful mix of the new and the over-familiar-but-that-doesn’t-make-’em-bad. Wasn’t the original radio ‘Man In Black’ the super-creepy Valentine Dyall of City Of The Dead/ The Haunting fame? I’m sure Day At The Dentist’s has been favourably remarked on Vault Mk. I and I can vouch for the all round superbness Stephen Gallagher’s superlative The Horn.

Thanks to John Mains for the cover scan!