Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense by Linda Landrigan

drowning man—which I am—clutching at a straw, I’ve continued swimming out to sea, trying to get my hands on that obeah . It’s my only hope. But the currents keep carrying it just beyond my grasp. My strokes are getting much weaker now, it seems, and I’m no closer to getting my fingers on the obeah than I was in the beginning. The night is so black I don’t even know where land is anymore. The tiny, scattered lights of Bequia have been extinguished for some time, and the night is so dark I can’t even make out the mass of St. Vincent. There are barracuda out here in the deep water, and didn’t Two Moons tell me to watch out for barracuda?
    â€œ Obeah! I believe in you! I believe, I believe, I believe! I— ”

DONALD E. WESTLAKE
    GOOD NIGHT! GOOD NIGHT!  
    December 1960
    NOW ONE of mystery’s most popular writers, Westlake is known as a master of both the comic caper and (in his books written as Richard Stark) the violent hard-boiled novel. Westlake was a major presence in AHMM during the 1960s under both names, and indeed, he is known for the variety of his pseudonyms, each with its distinctive style. Westlake was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1993. He not only won an Edgar Award, but was also nominated for an Oscar, for his screenplay adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Grifters .
    Pain.
    Pain in his chest, and in his stomach, and in his leg. And a girl was singing to him, her voice too loud. And it was dark, with shifting blue-gray forms in the distance.
    I’m Don Denton, he thought. I’ve hurt myself.
    How? How have I hurt myself? But the girl was singing too loudly, and it was impossible to think, and figure it out. And his terrific visual memory—so great a help to him as an actor—was of no help to him now. He felt himself falling away again, blacking out again, and with sudden terror he knew he wasn’t fading into sleep, he was fading into death.
    He had to wake up. Open the eyes, force the eyes open, make the eyes open. Listen to that damn loud girl, listen to her, concentrate on the words of the song, force the mind to work.
    â€œ Good night, good night.
We turn out every light;
The party’s done, the night’s begun,
Good night, my love, good night .”
    It was dark, blue-gray dark, and his eyelids were terribly heavy. He forced them up, wanting to see, wondering why the singing girl and the blue-gray dark.
    It was the television set. All the lights in the room were off, and the shades were drawn against the night-glow of the city. Only the television lit the room, with shifting blues.
    As he watched, the girl stopped singing and bowed to thunderous applause. And then he saw himself , striding across the stage, smiling and clapping his hands together, and memory came flooding back.
    He was Don Denton, and this was Wednesday night, between the hours of eight and nine, and on the television screen he was watching The Don Denton Variety Show , taped that afternoon.
    The Don Denton Variety Show was, in television jargon, live. The show that he was watching now was not a kinescope of a previous show, nor was it filmed, employing the cutting and editing techniques of film. Since it was neither, since it had been run through just as though it actually were going on the air at the time it had been performed, it was a live show, even though it had been recorded, via videotape, two hours before airtime. Due to various union requirements, it was much cheaper to do the show between five and six than between eight and nine. At the end of the show, at nine o’clock, an announcer would rapidly mumble the information that the show had been prerecorded and that the audience reaction had been technically augmented—a euphemism for canned laughter and canned applause—and so honesty and integrity would be maintained.
    Denton watched all his own shows, not because he was an egotist—though he was—but