100 Books Like The Hitchcock Romance

With the exception of the prefatory material, which one can skip, this is one of the very best books on Hitchcock.

It is beautifully written and attentive to cinematic details and larger themes. It offers rich interpretations of several central films, with the first half focused on close interpretation and the second half, written later in Wood’s career, more orientated toward Marx, Freud, and gay studies.

Though the book is uneven, it contains some of the best analyses one will ever read of Hitchcock’s major films.

Probably the #1 challenge for me as a mystery writer is holding the readers’ attention and keeping them engaged from Page One to The End. The answer is: create suspense. Keep the reader wondering What’s going to happen next. Ask unanswered questions. Not so much “Whodunnit?” but the more complex: “What’s going on here?”

This book contains interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, the premier master of suspense, talking to the great director Francois Truffaut and dissecting the how-to of creating suspense. His examples and explanations made me truly understand the choices I make when I structure a plot, a scene, or even a moment in the book. Do I want the reader to inhale or exhale or gasp, and why does it matter?  

How can one take the tradition of feminist film studies (instigated by Laura Mulvey’s ‘the male gaze’ essay) seriously and at the same time be hooked to the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock?

Tania Modleski had set herself the task in this 1988 study to combine these two positions that, for a long time, seemed mutually exclusive. Whereas Mulvey had mentioned that the flashback in Hitchcock’s Vertigo was an exception that had proven the rule (of a cinema of patriarchy), Modleski reversed this by making the exceptions as such the rule in Hitchcock’s work. She thus ended up not condemning Hitchcock’s presumed patriarchal attitude but uncovering his ambivalence.

In her readings, she convincingly explains that it is not just a matter of desiring female characters but also identifying with them among others because of their cleverness.

Music is essential to the meaning of film, and I couldn’t get enough of this book.

Despite its narrower focus, it is a superior work, on a level with the best Hitchcock volumes. If music and film interest you, you will benefit from it. Moreover, Sullivan covers almost half of Hitchcock’s more than 50 films.

Blake’s book explores the way in which a distinctly Catholic sensibility shaped the cinematic imaginations of Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, John Ford, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian De Palma.

Blake’s point is not that these filmmakers were pious or even believers. He does demonstrate, though, that the Catholic cultures in which these filmmakers grew up significantly influenced both the stories they told and the images they created.

Who can resist a story of reinvention? We certainly can’t. Alfred Hitchcock’s reputation as the Master of Suspense was secure when Rebello began telling his story. But Hitch, the artist, wanted to continue challenging himself creatively, while Hitch, the businessman, understood that audience tastes were changing as the 1960s dawned.

With Psycho (1960), he risked everything to tell an unexpected, transgressive story. Rebello reveals that, by changing how he made movies, Hitchcock changed the movies entirely. As Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho spawned the film, Rebello’s meticulous history became the movie Hitchcock (2012).

Sheila Kohler, a mentor of mine whose work is featured in this thrilling collection, is fond of saying that suspense arises from putting a vulnerable character in a dangerous situation. A literary writer of the highest caliber, Sheila knows how to generate the suspense that keeps the page turning. Crime fiction has a long history going back to Dostoevsky and beyond, to the great tragedians—the commission of a crime entails motive, means, and is inherently dramatic. This eclectic selection of mystery and female noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, features superstar writers like Edwidge Danticat, Margaret Atwood, Sheila Kohler, Elizabeth McCracken, and Joyce Carol Oates herself. The writing is luminous, the themes are varied—from domestic horror to the erotic to dark fairy tales—and the tales keep the reader turning the page.

These stories were picked out by the master of suspense, himself, Alfred Hitchcock. These stories are both horrific and suspenseful. With tales involving a flesh-eating troll, something creepy lurking about in the woods that kills anything that comes into its path, and an uninvited odd boy that comes to a party with evil intentions, one will not be able to put this book down. It might even make you want to leave the lights on during the night.

No one can deny that Patricia Highsmith knew how to create suspense. Alfred Hitchcock saw that Strangers on a Train was the ideal spine-tingler for a great movie. Other directors have found the Ripley series perfect nail-biting stories to work with. Highsmith takes us through the process of building suspense from the germ of an idea through the plotting, the drafts, and the revisions, using examples from her own work, short stories, and novels. I’m not surprised this book has stayed in print for over fifty years. I still dip into it and get inspired.

This is a great novella based on a specific incident in the young Alfred Hitchcock's life which subsequently forms the backbone for his demeanor, interests, films, and philosophy. Fictionalised biography can come under criticism for not being accurate and it's true that some factual accuracy is put aside here but that's not to the detriment of story. Volk doesn't put a foot wrong in tone, characterisation, or prose. This is an engaging, compelling work that illuminates Hitchcock in the same way that Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde illuminates Monroe or John Connolly's He does the same for Stan Laurel. Thoroughly enjoyed it. This version is no longer available, but it forms part of The Dark Masters trilogy featuring similar characterisations of the actor Peter Cushing and writer Aleister Crowley which is also highly recommended.