All at Once, No Alice

by Cornell Woolrich

“Along with Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich practically invented the genre of noir.” —Newsday

“Critical sobriety is out of the question so long as this master of terror-in-the-commonplace exerts his spell.” - Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review

"No one has ever surpassed Cornell Woolrich for shear suspense, or equalled him for exciting entertainment." - Robert Bloch

"Woolrich can distill more terror, more excitement, more downright nail-biting suspense out of even the most commonplace happenings than nearly all his competitors." - Ellery Queen

"An opus out of the ordinary, highly emotional and suspenseful, with a surprise finish that turns somersaults." - The Saturday Review of Literature on "The Bride Wore Black".

"Revered by mystery fans, students of film noir, and lovers of hardboiled crime fiction and detective novels, Cornell Woolrich remains almost unknown to the general reading public. His obscurity persists even though his Hollywood pedigree rivals or exceeds that of Cain, Chandler, and Hammett.What Woolrich lacked in literary prestige he made up for in suspense. Nobody was better at it." - Richard Dooling, from his Introduction to the print edition.

“He was the greatest writer of suspense fiction that ever lived.” — Francis M. Nevins, Cornell Woolrich Biographer

All at Once, No Alice was first published in Argosy magazine March 2, 1940. The story, considered to be one of his two classic "annihilation" stories, the other being "Finger of Doom", are based on similar premises - a man meeting the woman of his dreams who then disappears from his life without a trace.

Jimmy Cannon, a store clerk and the narrator of the story, elopes with Alice Brown, whom he hardly knows and they marry with a roadside justice of the peace. Subsequently, they can't find an available hotel room and a clerk at the Royal hotel allows Alice to stay in a tiny single room with a cot while Jimmy is consigned to a room at the YMCA.

The next morning, Jimmy returns to retrieve Alice who appears to have vanished - and not just from the room. Her name is gone from the register, the justice of the peace claims to have not married them and the cops think Jimmy is a lunatic. And, thus, starts a race against the clock to save Alice!

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. He's often compared to other celebrated crime writers of his day, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler.

Woolrich is considered the godfather of film noir and is often referred to as the Edgar Allen Poe of the 20th century, writing well over 250 works including novels, novelettes, novellas and short stories.

He attended New York's Columbia University but left school in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, "Cover Charge", was published. "Cover Charge" was one of six of his novels that he credits as inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Woolrich soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms. His best known story today is his 1942 "It Had to Be Murder" for the simple reason that it was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie "Rear Window" starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was remade as a television film by Christopher Reeve in 1998.

Genres: Mystery, Noir, Short Stories, Crime, Pulp

50 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 30, 2015

About the author

Cornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including "William Irish" and "George Hopley" [...] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.

Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]

Reviews

[Bobby Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve ever wondered why Cornell Woolrich is so often lauded as the greatest mystery and suspense writer of all time — an opinion I wholeheartedly share — all one has to do is read his short story, All at Once, No Alice, first published in Argosy Magazine in March, 1940, under the name William Irish. Romantic, harrowing, and ultimately thrilling, All At Once, No Alice is without doubt one of the most satisfying examples of Woolrich’s genius at creating suspense. No writer of the twentieth-century could touch him in this regard, and that continues into the twenty-first century.

A whirlwind romance, and a shortage of hotel rooms leads to the unthinkable for a newly married man in this riveting short story. When Jimmy returns in the morning after a night at the Y to pick up his bride from the tiny hotel storage room, she isn’t there. Worse, her name does not appear on the register, and both the clerk on duty that night and the bellboy, claim not to remember either of the newlyweds. Once the police become involved, things take a turn for the worse for the desperate Jimmy, as the person who married them outside Lake City claims it never happened, and the people Alice worked for claim not to know her, either.

With no evidence that she ever existed, the cops think he’s batty, and only their sympathy prevents him from being locked up in the loony bin. But a cop named Ainsley has a wife too, and can’t quite let Jimmy go down the tubes. When a sliver of proof — and that’s all — is discovered indicating Alice might actually exist, it’s up to Ainsley and Jimmy to find her, and uncover the reason everyone is lying about Alice. I can’t give away much more, but the story has a thrilling ending, sort of atypical of many Woolrich tales, and all the better for it. Fabulous story, tremendous writing. One of the most satisfying short stories of suspense you’ll ever read.

[Bobby Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve ever wondered why Cornell Woolrich is so often lauded as the greatest mystery and suspense writer of all time — an opinion I wholeheartedly share — all one has to do is read his short story, All At Once, No Alice, which was first published in Argosy Magazine in March, 1940, under the name William Irish. Romantic, harrowing, and ultimately thrilling, All At Once, No Alice is without doubt one of the most satisfying examples of Woolrich’s genius at creating suspense — even in the shorter format. No writer of the twentieth-century could touch him in this regard, and that continues into the twenty-first century.

A whirlwind romance, and a shortage of hotel rooms leads to the unthinkable for a newly married man in this riveting short story. When Jimmy returns in the morning after a night at the Y to pick up his bride from the tiny hotel storage room, she isn’t there. Worse, her name does not appear on the register, and both the clerk on duty that night and the bellboy, claim not to remember either of the newlyweds. Once the police become involved, things take a turn for the worse for the desperate Jimmy, as the person who married them outside Lake City claims it never happened, and the people Alice worked for claim not to know her, either.

With no evidence that she ever existed, the cops think he’s batty, and only their sympathy prevents him from being locked up in the loony bin. But a cop named Ainsley has a wife too, and can’t quite let Jimmy go down the tubes. When a sliver of proof — and that’s all — is discovered indicating Alice might actually exist, it’s up to Ainsley and Jimmy to find her, and uncover the reason everyone is lying about Alice. I can’t give away much more, but the story has a thrilling ending, sort of atypical of many Woolrich tales, and all the better for it. Fabulous story, tremendous writing. One of the most satisfying short stories of suspense you’ll ever read, and the basis for Return of the Whistler, a fine entry in the “B” series based on the old radio show.

Note: Once available to everyone as a downloadable single story on Kindle, authorized by the Woolrich Trust (the version I have), it now appears to only be available in Volume One of the Literary Noir Collection of Woolwich stories. This GR listing is, I believe, meant to represent a Kindle version in the Canadian Public Domain, which is listed as ASIN B087QKRKPS on Amazon. I’m not sure, but it may not be downloadable in countries with conflicting copyright issues.

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

06/2018

Cornell Woolrich's significant plot involves an underdog (of either gender) fighting against, desperately searching, a void, a blank wall, to solve an unsolvable mystery. This story involves this impossible quest, plus the innocent, desperately pure, love which also plays a part in Woolrich's fiction. The novella You'll Never See Me Again comes to mind, as well as his pulpy, brilliant, novel Deadline at Dawn.

[Edwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a classic early story of the victim being "erased" and the effort by the protagonist to prove otherwise. The talented Mr. Woolrich pulls it off very nicely.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mid-20th Century North American Crime Readathon
BOOK 29
Can Woolrich find some kind of light in his literature? I ran across this novella in a "Locked Room" omnibus edited by Otto Penzler: a book of impossible crimes. And if anyone can come up with the impossible, it's one of noir's greatest authors: Cornell Woolrich.
HOOK - 3: "It was over so quickly I almost thought something had been left out...The only way I could tell for sure it was over was when I heard him say: 'You may kiss the bride.'". But this is Woolrich's dark universe, and we know his only marriage lasted a very short period of time. The real man, Woolrich, lived in darkness on many levels: he was an alcoholic, ill, trapped by an over-bearing mother, and gay. This 'fiction' marriage is gonna be trouble...
PACE - 4:...and trouble comes fast and furious.
PLOT - 5: The newly married couple can't find a nice place to stay for their honeymoon night. One hotel has a small storage room with just a cot, so the husband leaves her there, then check into the YMCA. Oddly, in real life, Woolrich may have spent much time at various YMCA's (early on, most if not all of them rented rooms to men only, in this case for $1.50. And I gotta add the image of the YMCA isn't the one from the Village People song: it's a not-for-profit organization and does much for many communities and offers discount memberships based on income and age). The next morning, the new husband goes back to the hotel's tiny storage room and there is no one there, nothing, no cot, just a man painting the room! He knows she signed in, but the register doesn't have her hame, the night manager and the night bellboy swear they never saw the woman, the preacher tells the cops he married no one the previous evening...it's a fascinating premise. Given the author's ultimate descent into madness, we can see this happening to him: there was no wife in the first place...or something....
CHARACTERS - 4: Mr. Jimmy Cannon has met and married Alice Brown, a shy maid for a rich family. As Mr. Cannon closes in on a complete breakdown, one singular policeman, Ainsley, is willing to go along with Mr. Cannon, live the previous night backward to help find Alice Brown. You might not remember Jimmy, but oh, you'll not forget Alice, especially when Woolrich provides a beautifully rendered explanation. Then there is a butler, a secretary, a bully of a hotel manager, and more.
ATMOSPHERE - 5: Woolrich provides a sense of dark, evil, desperation inside the mind of the husband. Here, when the husband opens the door to a storage closet with just a man painting the room, the atmosphere ramps to 5 stars: and all from this small simple storage area. That's what this author does: he takes nothing and makes it worthy of a breathtaking moment of suspense.
SUMMARY: My rating is 4.2: the premise is a great one, handled perfectly.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big admirer of the writing of Cornell Woolrich, he of 22 novels and more than 200 stories. Though his plots may require readers to suspend disbelief, the reader sticks at it.. however unlikely the scenario may be, it is not impossible, just very unlikely. As much as finding out how the plot unfurls, we want to see just how Woolrich pulls it off.

He provokes the reader’s curiosity in ways none of his noir counterparts, even Chandler or Hammett, ever considered attempting. Chandler, an admirer of his ‘artificial trick plots’ commented that he made ‘excessive demands on Lady Chance’.

Such is All At Once, No Alice, set in the fictional city of Michianopolis. It first appeared in Argosy Magazine in March 1940, and the plot centres around the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful young woman, a scenario that Woolrich uses quite often.

The narrator is Jimmy Cannon, a store clerk, who elopes with Alice Brown, a girl who he has barely just met, but has fallen in love with. They marry and go in search for a hotel, but due to a convention being on, very little is available, and they only manage to find a single bed in a loft room for Alice, and a bed at the Y for Jimmy. In the morning, you guessed it, any trace of Alice has disappeared.

Though it begins in a lighthearted manner, it soon turns dark as Jimmy searches for Alice. Even the roadside justice of the peace, who married them, denies even meeting them. The tension increases as the darker mood does, Jimmy’s narration conveying his feeling of utter desperation and alienation. What began as a jaunty tale is now more reminiscent of something written by Poe.

And all this in just over 50 pages, longer than a usual ‘short story’, a format that Woolrich favoured, as not only did it suit the magazine format but also could be adapted for things like ‘The Twilight Zone’ or ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’.

Interestingly also, it’s an example of a sub-genre he pioneered, paranoid noir; the story awash with overtones of guilt, fear and despair - though a variation of which, perhaps the forerunner, is the 1936 novel by Ethel Lina White, The Lady Vanishes (later to be a Hitchcock film), three years earlier.

[Pamela Mclaren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this short story back in February (it's now July) and can't believe that I didn't write a review (opps, there it is as a comment). The story is still vivid in my mind and because of that, I have to add a comment and say that it is Woolwich is a master in writing a tight, concise story that builds to a dramatic crescendo. In this case, a man marries a woman and they travel to a hotel for their honeymoon. Shortly afterwards, she goes missing and no one admits that she ever existed. And he now has to fight against that to prove that she does indeed exist. You feel for the main character, you feel his desperation as it builds and you experience relief as the story concludes.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most highly regarded of Cornell Woolrich’s short stories or Novellas. It has been republished here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

I am beginning to see how great an influence CW had on subsequent writers. Cp., for example, Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled; or Hugo Wilcken’s The Reflection.

[Andrea Santucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eccellente mistero impossibile che però nel finale richiede forse un po' troppa sospensione dell'incredulità.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice little novella, Coolrich has style oozing from the page

[Lyle Boylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story here by Woolrich. A real pleasure.