The second volume of a three-volume reprint of his short stories. These particular ones were published between 1956 and 1960.
His stories are short, sharp, mean, fun, heavily ironic, usually (only one exception here) with a surprise ending. These endings naturally are hit or miss, although Bloch didn’t get his reputation by missing often.
He was an excellent craftsman. He got into trouble when he involves his plots in the concerns of 1950’s eggheads. That wasn’t in itself what hurts the story, for he was smarter than the average malcontent of the era and of course he wrote better. His problem was that he still ended these stories with one of his trick endings, which had the literary effect of shooting a bird in flight. (He wrecks one study of abnormal psychology in the same way.)
He was also apparently a true believer in the occult, which inspired his best story. Its flaw: his Hitchcockian coldness kept him from creating characters I cared about, and the story needed them. It was also the one without a surprise. ( )

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