What do you think?
Rate this book
The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
Contains 8 stories:
- Kiss of the Cobra
- Dark Melody of Madness
- Speak to Me of Death
- I'm Dangerous Tonight
- Guns, Gentlemen (a.k.a The Lamp of Memory)
- Jane Brown's Body
- The Moon of Montezuma
- Somebody's Clothes- Somebody's Life
- Kiss of the Cobra
- Dark Melody of Madness
- Speak to Me of Death
- I'm Dangerous Tonight
- Guns, Gentlemen (a.k.a The Lamp of Memory)
- Jane Brown's Body
- The Moon of Montezuma
- Somebody's Clothes- Somebody's Life
- GenresShort StoriesNoir
368 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1981
3 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Cornell Woolrich
439 books472 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...]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 10, 2025
4.5 overall.
Summing himself up at one point, Woolrich said of his work:
At least until the latter part of his life - when the desire began to leave his spirit (or was it pushed out?) - he seemed to write as if he were kin to some of the characters in this collection: he wrote as if possessed.
The bulk of Woolrich's mainstream novels do not deal in the supernatural, but these 8 (mostly) early stories do. Perhaps the short story market at the time (the '30s, for the most part) had more of a taste for what veered toward the uncanny. Whatever the motivation, Woolrich clearly took up the call and - when he was working at his best - ran with it.
'Kiss of the Cobra': 5
My favorite in this collection; unbridled and scary wackiness. In a 'pressure cooker' home scenario, a few family members are accosted by their father's return from abroad with his second wife: a Hindu snake priestess. (How did they meet, socially?!!) In lesser hands, this would play as utter garbage but Woolrich's confidence here is striking and a thing of bizarre beauty. The way he describes everything (esp. the new 'bride' and her machinations) is by way of economic suggestion. The result is singularly macabre. A masterpiece in its own minor form.
'Dark Melody of Madness' (aka 'Papa Benjamin'): 5
A popular bandleader finds he's losing his spark. He happens upon a voodoo cult in the throes of celebration and unwittingly poaches their 'music' to create a new sensation for his club act, thus releasing the wrath of an evil spirit. Deeply atmospheric and replete with dread.
'Speak To Me of Death': 5
Woolrich would later extend this to a novel, 'Night Has a Thousand Eyes'. I've read the novel (reviewed separately) and, while it's very good, I prefer this precognition tale in its shorter form, as it feels more powerful when it's more compact.
'I'm Dangerous Tonight': 5
About a dress that turns any woman who wears it into a murderess; a sort of 'La Ronde' of dark fate. What gives the story its particular punch is its depiction of the three unlikely (and otherwise innocent) women who each fall prey to what they're wearing. It's also noteworthy that anyone who even grazes the dress in close proximity becomes temporarily overtaken with murderous thoughts. Closer to being a novella though more of a really long short story.
Best line:
A story of reincarnation that's overly romantic (it even includes a duel) and not all that compelling.
'Jane Brown's Body': 5
Like 'I'm Dangerous Tonight', this is the only other entry that leans toward being a novella. It's Woolrich's take on 'Frankenstein', with notable narrative shifts. I found myself wondering if, prior to writing 'Poor Things', Alasdair Gray had gotten his hands on this tale, since his own Frankenstein homage shares something essential about the 'creature'. Cleverly combined with a mob story, 'JBB' features a sympathetic young woman as the tragic experiment victim, and an adventurous and gutsy pilot who is an unlikely candidate for true love.
Best paragraph:
Spanish-flavored in its poetic language, this is an uninvolving tale of delayed revenge.
'Somebody's Clothes--Somebody's Life': 2
An idea somewhat (and much less effectively) reworked from 'I'm Dangerous Tonight'. Meh.
Summing himself up at one point, Woolrich said of his work:
"I wasn't that good, you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines, surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth."The self-deprecation may be strong - but so was his desire to write. He said it was something he loved doing.
At least until the latter part of his life - when the desire began to leave his spirit (or was it pushed out?) - he seemed to write as if he were kin to some of the characters in this collection: he wrote as if possessed.
The bulk of Woolrich's mainstream novels do not deal in the supernatural, but these 8 (mostly) early stories do. Perhaps the short story market at the time (the '30s, for the most part) had more of a taste for what veered toward the uncanny. Whatever the motivation, Woolrich clearly took up the call and - when he was working at his best - ran with it.
'Kiss of the Cobra': 5
My favorite in this collection; unbridled and scary wackiness. In a 'pressure cooker' home scenario, a few family members are accosted by their father's return from abroad with his second wife: a Hindu snake priestess. (How did they meet, socially?!!) In lesser hands, this would play as utter garbage but Woolrich's confidence here is striking and a thing of bizarre beauty. The way he describes everything (esp. the new 'bride' and her machinations) is by way of economic suggestion. The result is singularly macabre. A masterpiece in its own minor form.
'Dark Melody of Madness' (aka 'Papa Benjamin'): 5
A popular bandleader finds he's losing his spark. He happens upon a voodoo cult in the throes of celebration and unwittingly poaches their 'music' to create a new sensation for his club act, thus releasing the wrath of an evil spirit. Deeply atmospheric and replete with dread.
'Speak To Me of Death': 5
Woolrich would later extend this to a novel, 'Night Has a Thousand Eyes'. I've read the novel (reviewed separately) and, while it's very good, I prefer this precognition tale in its shorter form, as it feels more powerful when it's more compact.
'I'm Dangerous Tonight': 5
About a dress that turns any woman who wears it into a murderess; a sort of 'La Ronde' of dark fate. What gives the story its particular punch is its depiction of the three unlikely (and otherwise innocent) women who each fall prey to what they're wearing. It's also noteworthy that anyone who even grazes the dress in close proximity becomes temporarily overtaken with murderous thoughts. Closer to being a novella though more of a really long short story.
Best line:
"What was it--money?" he said. "You haven't asked for any but I suppose that's it. Here, go out and buy yourself a heart."'Guns, Gentlemen': 2
A story of reincarnation that's overly romantic (it even includes a duel) and not all that compelling.
'Jane Brown's Body': 5
Like 'I'm Dangerous Tonight', this is the only other entry that leans toward being a novella. It's Woolrich's take on 'Frankenstein', with notable narrative shifts. I found myself wondering if, prior to writing 'Poor Things', Alasdair Gray had gotten his hands on this tale, since his own Frankenstein homage shares something essential about the 'creature'. Cleverly combined with a mob story, 'JBB' features a sympathetic young woman as the tragic experiment victim, and an adventurous and gutsy pilot who is an unlikely candidate for true love.
Best paragraph:
He catches Denholt staring with a peculiar intentness at his bared torso and muscular shoulders. "Pretty husky, aren't you?" the doctor remarks, offhandedly. But something chilly passes down the flyer's back at the look that goes with the words. O'Shaughnessy wonders what it means. Or do all doctors look at you that way, sort of calculatingly, as though you'd do nicely for some experiment they had in mind?'The Moon of Montezuma': 2
Spanish-flavored in its poetic language, this is an uninvolving tale of delayed revenge.
'Somebody's Clothes--Somebody's Life': 2
An idea somewhat (and much less effectively) reworked from 'I'm Dangerous Tonight'. Meh.
December 10, 2018
Another sampler of Woolrich's, this time the whole book read (thank you ILL!) - the selection focusing on Woolrich's overlap with "fantastic" content.
As might be expected, the books is full of excellent writing. There's some wonderful filigree (slang of the moment like "for the 'steenth time!") and his suspense writing is masterful - it's a specific skill and tool in a writer's toolbox (often overlooked - as it takes some hard work) that requires an awareness of and deployment of scenes in overall plotting along with precise timing and use of specific details in a certain order, sentence length, word choice, and overall control of time dilation. He's an expert at it and I wish more young writers studied him. I may doubt Francis Nevins Jr. assertion that Woolrich is the Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th Century but, along with being skilled, he's also a powerful writer, evidenced by the work here. Even his accepted failings - occasional mechanical writing to market expectations, a sloppy over-reliance on an overabundance of coincidence - become a thematically attuned strength over time, as his characters, aware that not *everything* can be plotted and orchestrated no matter how paranoid they may be, must just accept that the universe has it out for them and that they live in a universe called a "noir story". I can also totally see Nevin's assertion that Woolrich is exploring the same ground as the Absurdists movement, but in totally different form.
There's an interesting academic study that could come from comparing the works and lives of Woolrich and William S. Burroughs - both literary, self-loathing homosexuals (at least to start) raised in similar milieus of vanishing wealth and alienated/controlling parents, grown up on the literature and worldviews of dime novels and pulp fiction and finding themselves, through their recapitulation of these forms, questioning the basic ordering structures of society - love, gender, relationships, morality, drug use, crime, the law, police, religion, fate, destiny and free will.
But... to the stories...
"Cobra Woman" - the femme fatale as mysterious exotic "other" (Asian Indian, here) with some fear of "strange religions" sifted into the mix. An early Woolrich piece, this presents a seemingly supernatural mystery (death by snake poison) that's all explained away rationally in the end but there's the usual, enjoyably snappy noir patter, hideous sudden death and a scene of sadistic torture carried out on the villain. Fun!
"Dark Melody Of Madness" (aka "Papa Benjamin") - one of those Woolrich classics that's been adapted (and ripped off) many, many times in all forms of popular media. In a nutshell - a jazz musician steals the sacred voodoo music rhythms and is cursed. Exceptionally well done - atmospheric descriptions of seedy backstreet alleys and the secretive haunts of a voodoo cult (love the recurring details like the woman in the window of the alleyway who acts something like a sentry). Also, of course, race issues creep up here in interesting ways - voodoo is representative of primitive, atavistic beliefs (coded "black") and how can they possibly trump modern rationalism (coded "white")? There's also a minor-note theme about worries of racial mixing in your past (not as virulently presented as in H.P. Lovecraft).
The last minute "rational" explanation (as I said in another review of Woolrich, effectively dismantling a secret society in short story is a tall order for any writer, and Woolrich does a better job here than in "Graves For The Living" by focusing even more on relentless police procedures) may seem to take some air out of the tale but then, in what's become a Woolrich trademark, the "rational" world then has its own rug pulled out from under it, by a small capper scene that reasserts a world shared by the scientific and the "Unconscious" - here presented with a killer last line focusing on average people caught between huge, unknowable and implacable forces like The Law, Religion, the Occult, Science and Random Chance. Excellent!
"Speak To Me Of Death" - the original short story dry-run that would later be expanded into the novel Night Has a Thousand Eyes (and later filmed under that title) - in which a wealthy man receives a prediction of the unlikely circumstances of his death from an infallible and reluctant mystic. Woolrich (as seen above) usually writes in his own intriguing variation of what we now call the "Scooby Doo" plot (which in his time was called the "Weird Menace" plot and which rises out of the "Natural Gothic") and also relies on the "ticking clock" suspense mechanism as his plot engine (and he's very good at it) - here, the rich man is utterly convinced he will die as predicted due to completely accurate predictions made by the psychic which were impossible to fake or influence. You can see why Woolrich wanted to expand this story into a novel - to say more, I'll need to move into the spoiler zone . So a fatalistic, despairing tone is struck in the proceedings - this bleak and cynical tone undermines the rationalist work of the police and the hopes of the main character to save her father. The final shocking moment of action, much like "Dark Melody", can be read in complicated psychological terms (which here muddles the "Natural Gothic" with the "Ambiguous Gothic") but even that reading is tainted and soured by the sense of unknown, malignant and all-powerful forces working against presumptuous man. Not a perfect story, but a prefect blueprint of Woolrich's method and worldview. I must read the novel version.
"I'm Dangerous Tonight" - A thoroughly enjoyable novella, Woolrich's take on the "cursed item" horror trope but here fed through a pulp-crime-noir lens - the item in question is a haute couture red dress (demonically inspired, it would seem, and named by the title) that ignites generalized hatred and near uncontrollable homicidal desires in those that wear it. The early chapters trace the owners of the dress through vignettes of random murder, betrayal, madness and suicide - while simultaneously tracking the parallel story of an American detective in Paris out to avenge the death of his brother who was killed by a heroin dealer - this thread later taking over the story proper until the fatal piece of clothing unexpectedly reappears (because it has to!). What's so enjoyable in the reading of this is that Woolrich has come up with a perfect conceit to justify mayhem and amoral, bloodthirsty action - essentially, the dress transforms anyone who wears it (hell, anyone who even holds it) into a femme fatale and turns every relationship between characters into a scenario waiting to be corrupted into a noir movie! As the story moves back to the United States and it's flashy ending in a Long Island night club, we also get a bit of crossover with the world of Burroughs mentioned earlier, as a scene involving a heroin dealer reveals the same street argot of names that Burroughs mined so effectively (here "Revolving Larry" caught my eye, specifically).
"Gun's, Gentlemen" - has Woolrich proving his lit-writing chops in this vaguely genre-influenced piece turning on the classic trope of reincarnation as it traces the life of a young man from New Orlean's wealth and his increasing feelings of deja vu in a small Mediterranean town. The story has a subtle, poetic tone of romance and vague obsession that eventually expands into a full-blown, elegiac and dream-like ending on a beach, with two men and guns at twenty paces. Quite nice.
"Jane Brown's Body" - One of the most enjoyable stories, saddest stories I've ever read - a cri de coeur against the unfairness of this existence we call life, haunted always by death. The opening is fantastic as a nervous doctor races through the night, transporting a woman in the back seat who may or may not be dead. From there, it veers into a pulp tough-guy vs. mad doctor scenario - a noir variation on Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator, honestly - before picking up as a noir gangster revenge story. As usual for Woolrich it all hinges on a coincidence, which is fine, but the only slight misstep is a difficult to swallow time gap between certain story events (and how far along a tabula rasa personality would be by then) - yet this swift gap is dictated by the constraints of the story and thus forgivable as well. This section has some great punchy crime writing - and quick humor too (a regretful yet helpful fat lady, cabby hacks playing pinochle in the back seat, another cabby punched out in a police station) and some glib, descriptive slang ("a young riot was taking place"). It's a GREAT pulp story and it can't be understated that when pulp writing is great it is enjoyable as all get out, like a drunken spree of words on a page, barely controlled and yet all in service of plot momentum.
But, as always in Woolrich, awful fate is waiting in the wings and when the story shifts again into a full-blown, TALES FROM THE CRYPT-style horror story - it's *harrowing* stuff ("don't ask to see my hands, O'Shaughnessy, if you love me...") although, again, not without some grim humor ("looks rather bad, you know, old man" says the English Doctor with droll understatement). There's something of Poe's "The Oblong Box" in here (the desperate sea voyage with the hidden wife) and amazing creativity as Woolrich conjures a scenario that focuses on our tough guy hero's utter impotence in the face of a threat that can't be shot or punched or gutted through - because, in truth, it's a threat we ALL face eventually and there's no way to dodge. Also, we get a cynical take on a resulting media circus that helps to set up the race-against-the-clock finale, ratcheting up tension for the ending. There's an amazing scene of an individual shot and left for dead - struggling forward with the rescue, regardless - that is near hallucinatory in its conception - amazing writing ("he may be half dead - but cars don't die") illustrating the struggle of the rational mind over the pained, wounded animal body (I'll admit it, best read with a few drinks in you!) that nicely recapitulates the story's main themes.
In the end it's also a *heartbreaking* story - as stated by someone in a review - Woolrich is a *noir* writer but he's not a *hard-boiled* writer - his stories are usually about human anguish and suffering and you get it here in spades as a typical noir tough guy is broken down beyond his limits and death is the ultimate horror - death is *always* the ultimate horror (“Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages” - Elias Canetti). And, in the end, only a month's reprieve, a month's arrest of the terrible, inevitable truth of life ("I'm sorry that I can't give you more... or any real hope at all."). Woven in is a small moment of simple charity (paying the plane pilot) that shows both tender humanity and the utter unimportance of money as the currency of the whole world (but not life). The circular ending has to be one of the most unerringly fatalistic things I have ever read in my life!
The two final pieces are interesting but slightly lesser works. "The Moon of Montezuma" takes a traditional story idea ("cold murder is revenged on the perpetrator long after the fact by 'natural' coincidence") and sets it in poverty-stricken, rural Mexico - telling it in achingly beautiful (but sinister) poetic language. "Somebody's Clothes- Somebody's Life" is a teleplay about a Countess, addicted to gambling, who swaps her life for another and discovers that the lives of others are far more sad and broken than her own circumstances. Nice circular ending on this but the form didn't do much for me.
AND NOW....
"And so the reader slugs back another margarita, alone in this crowded, noisy bar. He pores over the page, desperately entwined in the drama of the tough-guy pilot and the doomed girl. Tequila burns in his blood but not enough to scorch away the emotion. He wants to savor the words, but they tumble forward, and he's already past the deadline by days. The clock ticks on mercilessly. Two more stories! But the clock hands move. The wondrous writing! But time will not halt... and the Inter-Library Loan is a harsh mistress with her fines..."
As might be expected, the books is full of excellent writing. There's some wonderful filigree (slang of the moment like "for the 'steenth time!") and his suspense writing is masterful - it's a specific skill and tool in a writer's toolbox (often overlooked - as it takes some hard work) that requires an awareness of and deployment of scenes in overall plotting along with precise timing and use of specific details in a certain order, sentence length, word choice, and overall control of time dilation. He's an expert at it and I wish more young writers studied him. I may doubt Francis Nevins Jr. assertion that Woolrich is the Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th Century but, along with being skilled, he's also a powerful writer, evidenced by the work here. Even his accepted failings - occasional mechanical writing to market expectations, a sloppy over-reliance on an overabundance of coincidence - become a thematically attuned strength over time, as his characters, aware that not *everything* can be plotted and orchestrated no matter how paranoid they may be, must just accept that the universe has it out for them and that they live in a universe called a "noir story". I can also totally see Nevin's assertion that Woolrich is exploring the same ground as the Absurdists movement, but in totally different form.
There's an interesting academic study that could come from comparing the works and lives of Woolrich and William S. Burroughs - both literary, self-loathing homosexuals (at least to start) raised in similar milieus of vanishing wealth and alienated/controlling parents, grown up on the literature and worldviews of dime novels and pulp fiction and finding themselves, through their recapitulation of these forms, questioning the basic ordering structures of society - love, gender, relationships, morality, drug use, crime, the law, police, religion, fate, destiny and free will.
But... to the stories...
"Cobra Woman" - the femme fatale as mysterious exotic "other" (Asian Indian, here) with some fear of "strange religions" sifted into the mix. An early Woolrich piece, this presents a seemingly supernatural mystery (death by snake poison) that's all explained away rationally in the end but there's the usual, enjoyably snappy noir patter, hideous sudden death and a scene of sadistic torture carried out on the villain. Fun!
"Dark Melody Of Madness" (aka "Papa Benjamin") - one of those Woolrich classics that's been adapted (and ripped off) many, many times in all forms of popular media. In a nutshell - a jazz musician steals the sacred voodoo music rhythms and is cursed. Exceptionally well done - atmospheric descriptions of seedy backstreet alleys and the secretive haunts of a voodoo cult (love the recurring details like the woman in the window of the alleyway who acts something like a sentry). Also, of course, race issues creep up here in interesting ways - voodoo is representative of primitive, atavistic beliefs (coded "black") and how can they possibly trump modern rationalism (coded "white")? There's also a minor-note theme about worries of racial mixing in your past (not as virulently presented as in H.P. Lovecraft).
The last minute "rational" explanation (as I said in another review of Woolrich, effectively dismantling a secret society in short story is a tall order for any writer, and Woolrich does a better job here than in "Graves For The Living" by focusing even more on relentless police procedures) may seem to take some air out of the tale but then, in what's become a Woolrich trademark, the "rational" world then has its own rug pulled out from under it, by a small capper scene that reasserts a world shared by the scientific and the "Unconscious" - here presented with a killer last line focusing on average people caught between huge, unknowable and implacable forces like The Law, Religion, the Occult, Science and Random Chance. Excellent!
"Speak To Me Of Death" - the original short story dry-run that would later be expanded into the novel Night Has a Thousand Eyes (and later filmed under that title) - in which a wealthy man receives a prediction of the unlikely circumstances of his death from an infallible and reluctant mystic. Woolrich (as seen above) usually writes in his own intriguing variation of what we now call the "Scooby Doo" plot (which in his time was called the "Weird Menace" plot and which rises out of the "Natural Gothic") and also relies on the "ticking clock" suspense mechanism as his plot engine (and he's very good at it) - here, the rich man is utterly convinced he will die as predicted due to completely accurate predictions made by the psychic which were impossible to fake or influence. You can see why Woolrich wanted to expand this story into a novel - to say more, I'll need to move into the spoiler zone . So a fatalistic, despairing tone is struck in the proceedings - this bleak and cynical tone undermines the rationalist work of the police and the hopes of the main character to save her father. The final shocking moment of action, much like "Dark Melody", can be read in complicated psychological terms (which here muddles the "Natural Gothic" with the "Ambiguous Gothic") but even that reading is tainted and soured by the sense of unknown, malignant and all-powerful forces working against presumptuous man. Not a perfect story, but a prefect blueprint of Woolrich's method and worldview. I must read the novel version.
"I'm Dangerous Tonight" - A thoroughly enjoyable novella, Woolrich's take on the "cursed item" horror trope but here fed through a pulp-crime-noir lens - the item in question is a haute couture red dress (demonically inspired, it would seem, and named by the title) that ignites generalized hatred and near uncontrollable homicidal desires in those that wear it. The early chapters trace the owners of the dress through vignettes of random murder, betrayal, madness and suicide - while simultaneously tracking the parallel story of an American detective in Paris out to avenge the death of his brother who was killed by a heroin dealer - this thread later taking over the story proper until the fatal piece of clothing unexpectedly reappears (because it has to!). What's so enjoyable in the reading of this is that Woolrich has come up with a perfect conceit to justify mayhem and amoral, bloodthirsty action - essentially, the dress transforms anyone who wears it (hell, anyone who even holds it) into a femme fatale and turns every relationship between characters into a scenario waiting to be corrupted into a noir movie! As the story moves back to the United States and it's flashy ending in a Long Island night club, we also get a bit of crossover with the world of Burroughs mentioned earlier, as a scene involving a heroin dealer reveals the same street argot of names that Burroughs mined so effectively (here "Revolving Larry" caught my eye, specifically).
"Gun's, Gentlemen" - has Woolrich proving his lit-writing chops in this vaguely genre-influenced piece turning on the classic trope of reincarnation as it traces the life of a young man from New Orlean's wealth and his increasing feelings of deja vu in a small Mediterranean town. The story has a subtle, poetic tone of romance and vague obsession that eventually expands into a full-blown, elegiac and dream-like ending on a beach, with two men and guns at twenty paces. Quite nice.
"Jane Brown's Body" - One of the most enjoyable stories, saddest stories I've ever read - a cri de coeur against the unfairness of this existence we call life, haunted always by death. The opening is fantastic as a nervous doctor races through the night, transporting a woman in the back seat who may or may not be dead. From there, it veers into a pulp tough-guy vs. mad doctor scenario - a noir variation on Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator, honestly - before picking up as a noir gangster revenge story. As usual for Woolrich it all hinges on a coincidence, which is fine, but the only slight misstep is a difficult to swallow time gap between certain story events (and how far along a tabula rasa personality would be by then) - yet this swift gap is dictated by the constraints of the story and thus forgivable as well. This section has some great punchy crime writing - and quick humor too (a regretful yet helpful fat lady, cabby hacks playing pinochle in the back seat, another cabby punched out in a police station) and some glib, descriptive slang ("a young riot was taking place"). It's a GREAT pulp story and it can't be understated that when pulp writing is great it is enjoyable as all get out, like a drunken spree of words on a page, barely controlled and yet all in service of plot momentum.
But, as always in Woolrich, awful fate is waiting in the wings and when the story shifts again into a full-blown, TALES FROM THE CRYPT-style horror story - it's *harrowing* stuff ("don't ask to see my hands, O'Shaughnessy, if you love me...") although, again, not without some grim humor ("looks rather bad, you know, old man" says the English Doctor with droll understatement). There's something of Poe's "The Oblong Box" in here (the desperate sea voyage with the hidden wife) and amazing creativity as Woolrich conjures a scenario that focuses on our tough guy hero's utter impotence in the face of a threat that can't be shot or punched or gutted through - because, in truth, it's a threat we ALL face eventually and there's no way to dodge. Also, we get a cynical take on a resulting media circus that helps to set up the race-against-the-clock finale, ratcheting up tension for the ending. There's an amazing scene of an individual shot and left for dead - struggling forward with the rescue, regardless - that is near hallucinatory in its conception - amazing writing ("he may be half dead - but cars don't die") illustrating the struggle of the rational mind over the pained, wounded animal body (I'll admit it, best read with a few drinks in you!) that nicely recapitulates the story's main themes.
In the end it's also a *heartbreaking* story - as stated by someone in a review - Woolrich is a *noir* writer but he's not a *hard-boiled* writer - his stories are usually about human anguish and suffering and you get it here in spades as a typical noir tough guy is broken down beyond his limits and death is the ultimate horror - death is *always* the ultimate horror (“Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages” - Elias Canetti). And, in the end, only a month's reprieve, a month's arrest of the terrible, inevitable truth of life ("I'm sorry that I can't give you more... or any real hope at all."). Woven in is a small moment of simple charity (paying the plane pilot) that shows both tender humanity and the utter unimportance of money as the currency of the whole world (but not life). The circular ending has to be one of the most unerringly fatalistic things I have ever read in my life!
The two final pieces are interesting but slightly lesser works. "The Moon of Montezuma" takes a traditional story idea ("cold murder is revenged on the perpetrator long after the fact by 'natural' coincidence") and sets it in poverty-stricken, rural Mexico - telling it in achingly beautiful (but sinister) poetic language. "Somebody's Clothes- Somebody's Life" is a teleplay about a Countess, addicted to gambling, who swaps her life for another and discovers that the lives of others are far more sad and broken than her own circumstances. Nice circular ending on this but the form didn't do much for me.
AND NOW....
"And so the reader slugs back another margarita, alone in this crowded, noisy bar. He pores over the page, desperately entwined in the drama of the tough-guy pilot and the doomed girl. Tequila burns in his blood but not enough to scorch away the emotion. He wants to savor the words, but they tumble forward, and he's already past the deadline by days. The clock ticks on mercilessly. Two more stories! But the clock hands move. The wondrous writing! But time will not halt... and the Inter-Library Loan is a harsh mistress with her fines..."
September 10, 2011
Great work. Excellent stories. Some a bit dated because of the language/slang of the time used but the plots are brilliant and the whole ride a lot of fun.
September 6, 2022
Se il talento di Woolrich incontra il fantastico e l’irrazionale, il risultato non può che essere un puro, geniale distillato di angoscia e di colpi di scena. Proprio come il racconto a cui deve il titolo, questa preziosa raccolta è come una composizione musicale che proviene direttamente dai più cupi recessi dell’animo umano, da un'insondabile tenebra dell’anima. Un tetro fatalismo permea ciascuna delle storie narrate e l’emozione prevalente, che avvinghia il lettore riga dopo riga, è la paura. Una paura densa e tangibile, che si potrebbe tagliare con un coltello, qualcosa di tremendamente vivo e pervadente, che ha vita propria e che non si dissolve nemmeno dopo che abbiamo voltato l’ultima pagina.
Dai riti vudù alla metempsicosi, dalla reincarnazione al topos prometeico di Frankenstein, dall’incursione del demonio ai sacrifici umani, ogni racconto scorre come un incubo a occhi aperti, come un’operazione senza anestesia. Fame d’essere amati, solitudine e morte si rincorrono in un girotondo da capogiro, in un crescendo di inquietudine all’ennesima potenza.
Un Woolrich insolito e sorprendente, quantomai fedele al proprio stile e alla sua indiscussa capacità di farsi portavoce, sincero e straziante, del buio e della tragicità insiti nell’esistenza.
Dai riti vudù alla metempsicosi, dalla reincarnazione al topos prometeico di Frankenstein, dall’incursione del demonio ai sacrifici umani, ogni racconto scorre come un incubo a occhi aperti, come un’operazione senza anestesia. Fame d’essere amati, solitudine e morte si rincorrono in un girotondo da capogiro, in un crescendo di inquietudine all’ennesima potenza.
Un Woolrich insolito e sorprendente, quantomai fedele al proprio stile e alla sua indiscussa capacità di farsi portavoce, sincero e straziante, del buio e della tragicità insiti nell’esistenza.
February 20, 2024
Excellent set of stories, although they are now somewhat dated. It is difficult to characterize the stories in a single genre, as they are both suspense but verge beyond this to the elements of the fantastic. There are also elements of the detective story present. The author is not well remembered today but these are well worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews