Thu 11 Apr 2019
Mystery Stories I’m Reading: IRA LEVIN “Sylvia.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[3] Comments
MARTIN H. GREENBERG, Editor – Deadly Doings. Ivy, paperback original; 1st printing, 1989.
#1. IRA LEVIN “Sylvia.” Short story. First appeared in Manhunt, April 1955. Reprinted in Giant Manhunt #6, 1955 (variation #1). Adapted for TV: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 19 January 1958 (Season 3, episode 16).
The name Ira Levin probably needs no introduction to readers pf his blog, but just in case, I’ll jog your memory: A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary’s Baby, The Boys from Brazil, and others. This was, however, the only story he had published for the crime fiction magazines.
In it wealthy businessman Lewis Melton, being ultra-protective of his daughter’s well-being, has already broken up her marriage to a fortune hunter named Lyle Waterman. When he intercepts a letter from Waterman to his still despondent daughter, he realizes that the stakes have suddenly risen a whole lot higher.
But when he finds a gun in his daughter’s bedroom, he realizes that Waterman has to be warned. But pf course the story doesn’t end here, making at a natural to be picked up a few years later by the Alfred Hitchcock TV show.
The story’s a good one, but if I’ve read the synopsis of the TV version correctly, they made some changes and I think they messed it up. I will have to watch it some time before I can tell you for sure.
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I’m currently working my way through three different SF magazines and best-of-year anthologies, story by story. Since this is nominally a mystery-oriented blog, I’ve decided to do the same with this particular anthology. There’s no theme behind the stories chosen, only that they are, acceding to the introduction, both “finely crafted and entertaining.”
April 11th, 2019 at 8:29 pm
In one of those strange coincidences, this review of the Hitchcock “Sylvia” also was published today.
http://barebonesez.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-hitchcock-project-james-p-cavanagh.html
April 11th, 2019 at 9:08 pm
Yes, that’s spooky for sure. Really, really spooky. Creepy, in fact. Who could have imagined it? Not me, not ever. Just think about it again before reading on. Next to impossible, right?
Thanks, Jim, for coming across both the other review and mine. I appreciate it. One for the memory books, that’s for sure.
Jack Seabrook, the blogger at the other end of the link, goes into a lot more detail about both the story and the TV show than I did. Again, still based only on the description, I like Levin’s story better.
But this will help. I hope Jack doesn’t mind if I use his link. It will take you directly to a online video of the TV show, which I will get to myself as soon as I can:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x54y9mi
April 12th, 2019 at 4:50 pm
This and A KISS BEFORE DYING are my favorite Levin works, I have to confess I didn’t care much for his later work, not even ROSEMARY’S BABY, though you can’t fault him as a writer even when you don’t care for something.