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Rating: 
Summary: The thrill has gone
Review: "More Tales of the Unexpected" is another collection of Roald Dahl's short stories. But in my opinion this book is trying to repeat the financial success without reaching the quality of the earlier published "Tales of the Unexpected".The first of the nine short stories is a good example of how Dahl's writing works. "Poison" accomplishes everything that the best of Dahl's stories can. The reader gets into strong stress until he reaches the plot at the end of the story. All of the three protagonists behave like everyone would in the situation of a friend being in danger. And the most fascinating thing is that no one would expect a plot like this. So it's the tension and the plot that make Dahl's short stories successful. "The Hitch-hiker" begins like one of these stories, but it's not worthy enough to be printed in a collection of unexpected plots. It contains many of Dahl's fabulous ideas on how to arrange a story: the spirit of driving a brand-new fast car or the situation of two people meeting each other for the first time, and the very strange hitch-hiker. The driver of the car, who is an author seems to be Mr Dahl himself. But the appearance of the hitch-hiker's skills and profession at the beginning of the last third of the story gives the reader a detailed idea of the end of the story. The way, Dahl describes the moment when the driver gets a ticket from the cop and the perfection of the hitch-hiker's pickpocket skills let's the reader reach the conclusion that he stole the cop's ticket book. This story seems to be more a bad fake of Dahl's writing than an original. Dahl's simple story-telling and his great plot arrangements are not presented in every story of More Tales of the Unexpected. So if you want to read Dahl's short stories for the first time, you should buy the first "Tales of the Unexpected". However, a real fan of Roald Dahl must have this one, too, because it contains four stories that are not published in other editions.
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