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The Black Path of Fear
The Black Path of Fear (1944) tells of a man who runs away to Havana with an American gangster's wife, followed by the vengeful husband, who kills the woman and frames her lover, leaving him a stranger in a strange land, menaced on all sides and fighting for his life.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1944
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About the author
Cornell Woolrich
433 books468 followersCornell 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...]
Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 4, 2011
Scott and Eve thought they escaped her gangster husband by fleeing to Cuba. They are proven wrong when she is knifed and Scott looks like the killer. Can he clear his name and get out of Cuba alive?
Yeah, I just couldn't get behind this one. I like Cornell Woolrich but his stories are always hit or miss with me. This one is a miss, unfortunately.
I'm not sure why this one rubbed me the wrong way. I think it's because the main character was such a dipshit. By the time I was halfway through, I was really hoping he couldn't clear his name and he'd be executed in Cuba.
Other than that, it has all the Woolrich standards. The suspense was good, the female characters fell into the usual Woolrich categories, and the man on the run feel was consistent throughout. Too bad I had a hard time paying attention.
The Black Path of Fear isn't a horrible book. I think it was a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me rather than life being too short. It's not bad but I just can't recommend it. Woolrich has written much better books than this one and you'd be better served spending your time with them.
Yeah, I just couldn't get behind this one. I like Cornell Woolrich but his stories are always hit or miss with me. This one is a miss, unfortunately.
I'm not sure why this one rubbed me the wrong way. I think it's because the main character was such a dipshit. By the time I was halfway through, I was really hoping he couldn't clear his name and he'd be executed in Cuba.
Other than that, it has all the Woolrich standards. The suspense was good, the female characters fell into the usual Woolrich categories, and the man on the run feel was consistent throughout. Too bad I had a hard time paying attention.
The Black Path of Fear isn't a horrible book. I think it was a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me rather than life being too short. It's not bad but I just can't recommend it. Woolrich has written much better books than this one and you'd be better served spending your time with them.
January 23, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9T0m...
Description: Chuck Scott gets a job as chauffeur to tough guy Eddie Roman; but Chuck's involvement with Eddie's fearful wife becomes a nightmare.
Not much here of any interest.
April 25, 2013
Lately I've been watching old film noir movies on YouTube before going to bed, just following the endless stream of old movies they have that I've never seen. A few weeks ago I watched one called the chase featuring Peter Lorre, essentially about a guy who steals a mobsters wife from him and flees to Havana with her, only to be framed for her murder once they get there. Last weekend I went to the goodwill in beeville Texas and stumbled upon this book. A couple pages in and I'm thinking to myself, ''gee, this book sure does seem familiar.'' Low and behold its the book that movie was made after. I liked the book much better than the movie adaptation, mostly due to the fact that the movie didn't make near as much sense, especially in regards to the whole main character suffering from trauma and restarting the story halfway through. The books plot was on a whole just more plausible. I discovered Cornell Woolrich due to him being associated somewhere with Raymond Chandler, and the only other book I've read by him is The Bride Wore Black which I didn't like as much simply because it wasn't Raymond Chandler. I enjoyed this book much more though, it had some nice exotic locales and slightly dark subject matter to keep me on the edge of my seat. I look forward to reading more Woolrich in the future.
Want to read
April 11, 2016This is copy 40 of 300 signed and numbered copies signed by:
William Hjortsberg (Introduction)
Matt Mahurin (Cover Illustration)
Jacob McMurray (Jacket Design)
William Hjortsberg (Introduction)
Matt Mahurin (Cover Illustration)
Jacob McMurray (Jacket Design)
July 31, 2008
Suspense thriller about a woman ending up with a knife in her back at some crowded nightclub. The guy has to run away from the Banana Republic police who are unimpeachably convinced he stabbed her to death. The book perpetually goes through flashbacks showing us, among other things, that the girl was a gangster's girlfriend and the fugitive was his ex-employee he picked up from the gutter. Cornell Woolrich writes these kind of innocent man on the run-type books very well, and either you're in or you're out.
April 7, 2023
One of my absolute favourite film noirs of all time is 1946's The Chase, a little gem that came right in the middle of the spectacular run of 1940s B-movie Cornell Woolrich adaptations (that also includes such absolute bangers as Phantom Lady, The Leopard Man, Black Angel, and I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes) and which is one of those movies that I kind of love how obscure and overlooked it is because it feels like it belongs to
me
and me alone.
Cornell Woolrich is an author who wrote like Hieronymus Bosch painted, and the movie absolutely brings to life the nightmarish poetry of his original novel, but I can't help but feeling like the book is a little flat in comparison. It's very pulpy, speedy, and insular in scope, which makes for a great reading experience but never really gets over feeling like just an overlong pulp story hastily converted into a novel -- which for all I know it is.
I know too that the Production Code-mandated ending of The Chase has given it a pretty bad rap over time (and there is for sure no way that a Hollywood movie of the 1940s would end the same way that the novel does), but I actually kind of prefer it and the much greater sense of dimension it gives the story that the book doesn't have.
But still, for what it is, this book is a fantastic little ride into the Woolrich dimension, which is a dark stress dream of paranoid delusion that very few other writers can accurately capture. It's filled to the brim with murder, psychotic gangsters, sea-faring roughnecks, and opium zombies -- and there is no way on Earth I could dislike a novel that features a female character named Midnight who helps escaped murderers solely because she has a vendetta against the police, and who casually drops lines like "I been in enough of your jails to take out naturalization papers."
Cornell Woolrich is an author who wrote like Hieronymus Bosch painted, and the movie absolutely brings to life the nightmarish poetry of his original novel, but I can't help but feeling like the book is a little flat in comparison. It's very pulpy, speedy, and insular in scope, which makes for a great reading experience but never really gets over feeling like just an overlong pulp story hastily converted into a novel -- which for all I know it is.
I know too that the Production Code-mandated ending of The Chase has given it a pretty bad rap over time (and there is for sure no way that a Hollywood movie of the 1940s would end the same way that the novel does), but I actually kind of prefer it and the much greater sense of dimension it gives the story that the book doesn't have.
But still, for what it is, this book is a fantastic little ride into the Woolrich dimension, which is a dark stress dream of paranoid delusion that very few other writers can accurately capture. It's filled to the brim with murder, psychotic gangsters, sea-faring roughnecks, and opium zombies -- and there is no way on Earth I could dislike a novel that features a female character named Midnight who helps escaped murderers solely because she has a vendetta against the police, and who casually drops lines like "I been in enough of your jails to take out naturalization papers."
August 22, 2019
If Goodreads had a half point system, this would have been a 3 1/2 Star rating for me. Not truly a 4 Star but I also couldn't just give this an average 3 Stars. I just love the initial concept too much and had heard various adaptations of this novel in Old Time Radio programs before that always had me fascinated. Even a more average Cornell Woolrich is better than many other writers' best work. He is a master of creating absolutely absurd premises and weaving them in a well narrated story that will easily make you forget how bonkers the plot actually is.
July 9, 2017
3 1/2 rounded up.
December 4, 2018
This was not my favorite Woolrich novel. Admittedly, I'd still buy a new edition if, say, Hard Case Crime were to re-issue it. It wasn't bad -- but I didn't find the mystery as intriguing or psychological aspects as compelling as in other Woolrich works. I think the book starts effectively "in media res," but then the flashback disrupts the flow. The last few chapters are spot-on, though.
February 14, 2014
Bill Scott is honest, though obviously not the brightest guy in the world. But he can’t help himself. He’s in love. Unfortunately Eve Roman, his new love, is married to a Miami mob boss. But she loves Scott, too, so they runaway together—to Havana.
In the first few pages of Cornell Woolrich’s The Black Path of Fear, Eve is stabbed to death in a Cuban nightclub and the police blame Scott. We get the backstory of how Scott and Mrs. Roman got together in a long flashback, but the majority of the book—which hour-by-hour covers no more than a day and a half—describes Scott’s desperate attempts to find the murderer and clear himself. His chances look dim. He doesn’t speak Spanish, the police are combing the city for him, he knows no one in Havana and when it comes down to it, a big part of him doesn’t really care. Eve is dead.
I’m working my way through Woolrich novels and short stories. It’s a rewarding journey although Black Path is not his best. My 1982 printing of the book (it was first published in 1944) reads almost as if it lacks a final edit. The dialog occasionally sounds a bit off, Scott’s hat mysteriously appears in one scene—after he’d dropped it somewhere else—and he doesn’t use his love for the dead woman as an argument for his innocence.
That’s the bad news. The good news is Woolrich takes a certainly unoriginal plot (though undoubtedly copied many times since) and builds it into a succession of nail-biting scenes in some of the most Black Path of Fearmemorably ugly, foreboding settings you can imagine. In one scene Scott is escorted by police down a suffocatingly narrow alley—too small to accommodate a car—in a run-down portion of Havana’s Chinatown. The alley smelled “like asafetida and somebody burning feathers, and the lee side of a sewer.” It was also dim.
It wasn’t of an even darkness; it was mottled darkness. Every few yards or so an oil lamp or kerosene torch or a Chinese paper lantern, back within some doorway or some stall opening, would squirt out a puddle of light to relieve the gloom. They were different colors, these smears, depending on the reflector they filtered through: orange and sulphur-green, and once even a sort of purple-red, were spewed around on the dirty walls like grape juice.
In another scene Scott is feeling his way in pitch darkness across a silent and seemingly empty skid-row office when something pricks his ear. It’s a clever, suspenseful set-up that leads to a creative result.
Scott is similar to many Woolrich protagonists, an ordinary guy dumped into extraordinary circumstances and challenged to save someone else, himself, his sanity, or all three. Emotions, not only of fear, but loneliness, disgust and hopelessness often drive his plots.
She had the look on her face of someone who has just been granted a quick glimpse down into the bottommost depths of hell from the top of the stairs. And didn’t turn away quickly enough.
Woolrich was a noir master. Although he’s not as well known as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, according to his biographer Woolrich influenced not only the French Roman noir novels but the bleak Hollywood crime dramas, film noir.
To me, noir represents not only a grim, dark setting or plot, but a style of writing. And Woolrich’s style is unmistakable: “Silence fell, and we kicked it around between us for a while.”
Like the majority of Woolrich’s novels and short stories, Black Path was dramatized, in this case, many times: One of several radio versions starred Cary Grant (1946), the movie version (1946) starred Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre and a TV drama (1954) had James Arness as Scott.
Black Path was one of Woolrich’s “black” series in the 1940s, when the author was in his prime, cranking out so many thrilling novels that he released some under two pen names, William Irish and George Hopley. Biographer Francis Nevins, Jr. called Woolrich the Poe of the Twentieth Century. Black Path is an entertaining, compelling read, but stick with Woolrich titles for the whole dark ride through the 1940s.
In the first few pages of Cornell Woolrich’s The Black Path of Fear, Eve is stabbed to death in a Cuban nightclub and the police blame Scott. We get the backstory of how Scott and Mrs. Roman got together in a long flashback, but the majority of the book—which hour-by-hour covers no more than a day and a half—describes Scott’s desperate attempts to find the murderer and clear himself. His chances look dim. He doesn’t speak Spanish, the police are combing the city for him, he knows no one in Havana and when it comes down to it, a big part of him doesn’t really care. Eve is dead.
I’m working my way through Woolrich novels and short stories. It’s a rewarding journey although Black Path is not his best. My 1982 printing of the book (it was first published in 1944) reads almost as if it lacks a final edit. The dialog occasionally sounds a bit off, Scott’s hat mysteriously appears in one scene—after he’d dropped it somewhere else—and he doesn’t use his love for the dead woman as an argument for his innocence.
That’s the bad news. The good news is Woolrich takes a certainly unoriginal plot (though undoubtedly copied many times since) and builds it into a succession of nail-biting scenes in some of the most Black Path of Fearmemorably ugly, foreboding settings you can imagine. In one scene Scott is escorted by police down a suffocatingly narrow alley—too small to accommodate a car—in a run-down portion of Havana’s Chinatown. The alley smelled “like asafetida and somebody burning feathers, and the lee side of a sewer.” It was also dim.
It wasn’t of an even darkness; it was mottled darkness. Every few yards or so an oil lamp or kerosene torch or a Chinese paper lantern, back within some doorway or some stall opening, would squirt out a puddle of light to relieve the gloom. They were different colors, these smears, depending on the reflector they filtered through: orange and sulphur-green, and once even a sort of purple-red, were spewed around on the dirty walls like grape juice.
In another scene Scott is feeling his way in pitch darkness across a silent and seemingly empty skid-row office when something pricks his ear. It’s a clever, suspenseful set-up that leads to a creative result.
Scott is similar to many Woolrich protagonists, an ordinary guy dumped into extraordinary circumstances and challenged to save someone else, himself, his sanity, or all three. Emotions, not only of fear, but loneliness, disgust and hopelessness often drive his plots.
She had the look on her face of someone who has just been granted a quick glimpse down into the bottommost depths of hell from the top of the stairs. And didn’t turn away quickly enough.
Woolrich was a noir master. Although he’s not as well known as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, according to his biographer Woolrich influenced not only the French Roman noir novels but the bleak Hollywood crime dramas, film noir.
To me, noir represents not only a grim, dark setting or plot, but a style of writing. And Woolrich’s style is unmistakable: “Silence fell, and we kicked it around between us for a while.”
Like the majority of Woolrich’s novels and short stories, Black Path was dramatized, in this case, many times: One of several radio versions starred Cary Grant (1946), the movie version (1946) starred Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre and a TV drama (1954) had James Arness as Scott.
Black Path was one of Woolrich’s “black” series in the 1940s, when the author was in his prime, cranking out so many thrilling novels that he released some under two pen names, William Irish and George Hopley. Biographer Francis Nevins, Jr. called Woolrich the Poe of the Twentieth Century. Black Path is an entertaining, compelling read, but stick with Woolrich titles for the whole dark ride through the 1940s.
July 7, 2019
This is not my favorite Woolrich. The suspense is beautifully engineered. The descriptions of that grim night in darkest Havana were as powerful in Woolrich prose as they would be in a Sam Fuller movie. The narrow streets, darker and more infested with murky slime, the Havanna Chinatown, and the drug den with the rancid beer and wacked out derelicts, build up a hell on Earth scenario. Especially for a stranger whose beloved was murdered- one minute a loving couple, the next a bereaved groom. She came in alive and happy. She left lifeless.
Yet, I did not believe in Scotty. Too many improbable fist fight victories and entrees into secret and forbidden places. Of course, you are supposed to back away from empathy with Scotty when vengeance has only one goal, strangulation murder for the crime boss. You are glad you are not him, and yet wish you were as strong as he. Vengeance is mine . And yours and yours. That is like the Bride who wore black. But she faced murder convictions and plenty of time to assess what failure of character went together with success in murdering the men she thought responsible for her lover's death. Scotty goes home, aalbiet bereft.
As Woolrich's biographer Francis Nevins shows, that scene's homosexual undertones are obvious. It's an eerie contrast to the love/death Scotty and his girl experience.
Yet, I did not believe in Scotty. Too many improbable fist fight victories and entrees into secret and forbidden places. Of course, you are supposed to back away from empathy with Scotty when vengeance has only one goal, strangulation murder for the crime boss. You are glad you are not him, and yet wish you were as strong as he. Vengeance is mine . And yours and yours. That is like the Bride who wore black. But she faced murder convictions and plenty of time to assess what failure of character went together with success in murdering the men she thought responsible for her lover's death. Scotty goes home, aalbiet bereft.
As Woolrich's biographer Francis Nevins shows, that scene's homosexual undertones are obvious. It's an eerie contrast to the love/death Scotty and his girl experience.
January 21, 2025
3.5⭐ "How long it takes to live your life, how short a time to tell it."
A hunted man/vengeance story. Woolrich is an absolute master at building a scene.
"I couldn’t find it for a minute, and then I did. There was a detail visible. Just one, in all that nothingness. A red mote. A dot, hanging suspended in the air. Like a spark on the loose, but that’s forgotten to finish falling the rest of the way.
I watched it for a bristly, shivery second or two. It didn’t move. I didn’t move either. I didn’t breathe much; maybe just a little, just enough to keep the works going.
Then suddenly I got it, by dint of long hard staring at it. Or, rather, by thinking it out, more than just staring. I knew what it was: it was a cigarette end being kept alight between somebody’s living lips. It had a slow, imperceptible rhythm to it when you looked long enough. It got smaller, dimmer, faded; then it came on again, clearer, brighter, larger. Breath was backing it, probably involuntary breath, like my own breathing was at the moment. Breath that couldn’t be stilled entirely but that was suppressed almost to the point of cessation. There was somebody alive over there, across the dark from me, so still, so watchful of me.
It gave itself away, the red pin point. It went up suddenly, about two feet in a straight vertical line. Then it stopped again, froze there. I translated it. The smoker had risen. He was erect; he was full height now, where he had been seated or crouched or inclined before.
It was deftly done. There wasn’t sound to go with it. He was trying to remain intangible, non-present to me. He didn’t know he’d already given himself away. The red ember must have been an oversight; perhaps long incessant habit made him forget he was holding smoldering tobacco out before his face."
A hunted man/vengeance story. Woolrich is an absolute master at building a scene.
"I couldn’t find it for a minute, and then I did. There was a detail visible. Just one, in all that nothingness. A red mote. A dot, hanging suspended in the air. Like a spark on the loose, but that’s forgotten to finish falling the rest of the way.
I watched it for a bristly, shivery second or two. It didn’t move. I didn’t move either. I didn’t breathe much; maybe just a little, just enough to keep the works going.
Then suddenly I got it, by dint of long hard staring at it. Or, rather, by thinking it out, more than just staring. I knew what it was: it was a cigarette end being kept alight between somebody’s living lips. It had a slow, imperceptible rhythm to it when you looked long enough. It got smaller, dimmer, faded; then it came on again, clearer, brighter, larger. Breath was backing it, probably involuntary breath, like my own breathing was at the moment. Breath that couldn’t be stilled entirely but that was suppressed almost to the point of cessation. There was somebody alive over there, across the dark from me, so still, so watchful of me.
It gave itself away, the red pin point. It went up suddenly, about two feet in a straight vertical line. Then it stopped again, froze there. I translated it. The smoker had risen. He was erect; he was full height now, where he had been seated or crouched or inclined before.
It was deftly done. There wasn’t sound to go with it. He was trying to remain intangible, non-present to me. He didn’t know he’d already given himself away. The red ember must have been an oversight; perhaps long incessant habit made him forget he was holding smoldering tobacco out before his face."
March 18, 2025
The terror begins in the first chapter as the protagonist's lover is killed while standing at his side in Havana, and it doesn't let up for the remainder of this short novel. The protagonist is a man on the run, first from the police and then from his lover's murderers. Woolrich knows how to grab the reader, fill him with fright, and keep him spellbound right through to the ending. As in all Woolrich's novels there's plenty of action, but it is the author's ability to play on his readers' darkest fears that is most important.
December 30, 2024
Per quanto più convenzionale della media dei romanzi di Woolrich, un noir di tutto rispetto, ambientato quasi interamente in una notte, in una Cuba da Inferno dantesco, basato sulla storia di un uomo comune trascinato, a causa di un amore sbagliato, in un incubo di baracche fetide e personaggi orripilanti. Ben scritto e dalle atmosfere torbide e soffocanti, sebbene privo della grazia che caratterizza i capolavori dell'autore. Una trama semplice e diretta, con un bel finale catartico.
***
***
November 6, 2020
Review forthcoming
August 11, 2025
trama ben sviluppata. A tratti prolisso
September 19, 2021
A vagrant named Bill Scott, also known as Scotty, finds someone's wallet in Miami. He returns it to a mobster named Edward Roman, who then rewards him by hiring him as his chauffeur. Scott quickly falls in love with the mobster's battered wife Eve, and they impulsively decide to flee to Cuba on a cruise ship to escape Roman's clutches.
On their first night in Cuba, the couple is photographed in a crowded bar, and moments later Eve is stabbed to death in Scott's arms. Scott is framed for the killing by a Chinese merchant, and he's promptly arrested. Scott breaks away from Detective Acosta and the Havana police, and is given refuge by intriguing woman named Media Noche, or "Midnight," who is also mourning the death of her lover (from smallpox). Together, they decide the key to clearing Scott of the murder is the photo taken of Eve and him at the bar. If they can locate the photographer, perhaps the photo he took of them might prove Scott's innocence.
Cornell Woolrich apparently knew Havana like the back of his head, which is presumably why he set so much of this 1942 novel in Havana's Chinatown. Any comprehensive summary of the novel would sound silly, but it doesn't matter. The book is an entertaining and breathless crime drama. Woolrich does several things extremely well: the first-person narration is engaging; the atmosphere of Chinatown (tenement buildings, opium dens, and gift shops) is exotic; the action scenes are gripping; the drug smuggling plot is intriguing; and the Miami flashback chapter is deftly handled.
Unfortunately, Woolrich fails to evoke the Havana locale authentically, and his racist portrayal of Chinese characters is off-putting. Several aspects of the plot don't make any sense, but oddly that's part of the book's charm; Woolrich never cared about plausibility, and consequently his books are more outrageous and more memorable than most other crime novels of the Forties.
The book has only 15 chapters, so it's a quick read. Woolrich based the novel on his original story "Havana Night," which is a better title despite not fitting into Woolrich’s “black” series. It’s an amusing lark, so improbably bad that it’s goofy and enjoyable. Since the book reads like a movie treatment, it's not surprising that it was adapted into B-movie called The Chase (1946) starring Robert Cummings, Michele Morgan, Steve Cochran, and Peter Lorre. The movie is superior to the novel; Cochran and Lorre are wonderful, and Philip Yordan’s screenplay makes several clever improvements to Woolrich’s story.
See my blog post: Cornell Woolrich: Master of Gloom and Doom.
On their first night in Cuba, the couple is photographed in a crowded bar, and moments later Eve is stabbed to death in Scott's arms. Scott is framed for the killing by a Chinese merchant, and he's promptly arrested. Scott breaks away from Detective Acosta and the Havana police, and is given refuge by intriguing woman named Media Noche, or "Midnight," who is also mourning the death of her lover (from smallpox). Together, they decide the key to clearing Scott of the murder is the photo taken of Eve and him at the bar. If they can locate the photographer, perhaps the photo he took of them might prove Scott's innocence.
Cornell Woolrich apparently knew Havana like the back of his head, which is presumably why he set so much of this 1942 novel in Havana's Chinatown. Any comprehensive summary of the novel would sound silly, but it doesn't matter. The book is an entertaining and breathless crime drama. Woolrich does several things extremely well: the first-person narration is engaging; the atmosphere of Chinatown (tenement buildings, opium dens, and gift shops) is exotic; the action scenes are gripping; the drug smuggling plot is intriguing; and the Miami flashback chapter is deftly handled.
Unfortunately, Woolrich fails to evoke the Havana locale authentically, and his racist portrayal of Chinese characters is off-putting. Several aspects of the plot don't make any sense, but oddly that's part of the book's charm; Woolrich never cared about plausibility, and consequently his books are more outrageous and more memorable than most other crime novels of the Forties.
The book has only 15 chapters, so it's a quick read. Woolrich based the novel on his original story "Havana Night," which is a better title despite not fitting into Woolrich’s “black” series. It’s an amusing lark, so improbably bad that it’s goofy and enjoyable. Since the book reads like a movie treatment, it's not surprising that it was adapted into B-movie called The Chase (1946) starring Robert Cummings, Michele Morgan, Steve Cochran, and Peter Lorre. The movie is superior to the novel; Cochran and Lorre are wonderful, and Philip Yordan’s screenplay makes several clever improvements to Woolrich’s story.
See my blog post: Cornell Woolrich: Master of Gloom and Doom.
July 16, 2022
RATING: 3.25
February 2, 2017
Based on his original short story "Havana Night" (Flynn's Detective Magazine, December 1942), The Black Path of Fear is the fifth novel in Cornell Woolrich's Black Series. Like much of Woolrich's work, Black Path of Fear deals with the destruction of love, the individual versus the system, and - of course - revenge. In this case, Bill Scott finds himself on the run from police and trying to prove his innocence after being framed for the murder of the woman he loved, the kept woman of a crime boss he worked for and stole her from.
What sounds like a convoluted plot comes across straightforward, as do many of our hero's escapades, as he winds his way through the labyrinthine streets and underworld - from dark, narrow alleys to decrepit opium dens - of Havana. There aren't many twists or surprises in Black Path of Fear, but that's not why one reads Woolrich; the focus of the story is on the main character's despair and loneliness, and how redemption, vengeance, or the occasional ally, do little to console those who have lost love.
The Black Path of Fear is my favorite title in the Black Series, for while likely intended to describe a lone man's flight from injustice or pursuit of justice, it can also stand as a description of life itself, and how all people are loners struggling to hang on to that brief glimmer of light that the rest of the world seems determined to extinguish at any given chance.
What sounds like a convoluted plot comes across straightforward, as do many of our hero's escapades, as he winds his way through the labyrinthine streets and underworld - from dark, narrow alleys to decrepit opium dens - of Havana. There aren't many twists or surprises in Black Path of Fear, but that's not why one reads Woolrich; the focus of the story is on the main character's despair and loneliness, and how redemption, vengeance, or the occasional ally, do little to console those who have lost love.
The Black Path of Fear is my favorite title in the Black Series, for while likely intended to describe a lone man's flight from injustice or pursuit of justice, it can also stand as a description of life itself, and how all people are loners struggling to hang on to that brief glimmer of light that the rest of the world seems determined to extinguish at any given chance.
April 7, 2011
I quite liked Black Path. I had read Rendezvous in Black a while back and been unimpressed. There was something plainly hokey about it. I have the same problem with certain Hitchcock movies -- they are willing to take style any way they can get it, even at the expense of plot. But I recently dug up some old Ellery Queens and, reading "C-Jag," was inspired to pick up The Black Path of Fear. I think in some way the ideal Woolrich story is probably about the length of what the old digests would call a "complete detective novel," something about a third the length of a regular paperback novel. His writing is always more than a little overdressed, and the real problem with purple prose is that it gives diminishing returns. What is cute for ten pages is not necessarily cute for two hundred.
Black Path is too cute by half, but I was pretty good for it all the same. It could have been much shorter and better for it, but that doesn't mean that it is padded. The first quarter of the book is an especially bravura performance. Everything after is good, but a bit of a let down given the excellence of the first part. The main character suffers from an abnormal lack of smarts and resourcefulness.
Black Path is too cute by half, but I was pretty good for it all the same. It could have been much shorter and better for it, but that doesn't mean that it is padded. The first quarter of the book is an especially bravura performance. Everything after is good, but a bit of a let down given the excellence of the first part. The main character suffers from an abnormal lack of smarts and resourcefulness.
December 16, 2019
A tightly-written potboiler built for late afternoon matinees with some style and wry, flirty dialogue. Also with some annoying and dated racial characterizations only slightly mitigated by the fact that they prove to be part of the myriad guises and eventually exposed artifice driving the narrative.
Good winter rain read.
Good winter rain read.
October 5, 2008
This is not the best Woolrich. There's a disjunct between the main character's role - a good guy - and earlier actions and voice in dialogue (bad guy). It has a lot of Woolrich's suspense working for it, but overall, I didn't enjoy it as much as The Bride Wore Black, or The Phantom Lady.
August 21, 2021
This is one of my absolute favorite Cornell Woolrich stories because of the adventure, plot twists, strange environments, and most of all, the dénouement.
The film version - renamed “The Chase” with Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre.
💥 Recommended.
The film version - renamed “The Chase” with Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre.
💥 Recommended.
October 4, 2021
A tense noir thriller set in the mean streets of Havana’s Chinatown. Although I didn’t see enough of Eve and Scotty’s love affair to really feel it, I really enjoyed the unique setting, merciless villains, Midnight’s grit, and Scotty’s dogged determination.
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