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Rendezvous in Black
On a mild midwestern night in the early 1940s, Johnny Marr leans against a drugstore wall. He’s waiting for Dorothy, his fiancée, and tonight is the last night they’ll be meeting here, for it’s May 31st, and June 1st marks their wedding day. But she’s late, and Johnny soon learns of a horrible accident—an accident involving a group of drunken men, a low-flying charter plane, and an empty liquor bottle. In one short moment Johnny loses all that matters to him and his life is shattered. He vows to take from these men exactly what they took from him. After years of planning, Johnny begins his quest for revenge, and on May 31st of each year—always on May 31st—wives, lovers, and daughters are suddenly no longer safe.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Cornell Woolrich
436 books470 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 - 30 of 171 reviews
March 24, 2025
Why get mad when you can get even?
A death that you probably wouldn’t find on a list of ‘1,000 ways to die’ becomes a most satisfying motive. Both are revealed early on. What’s left is the exacting of revenge. The earlier targets were struck unaware whereas those later on the list tried to evade the the metaphorical grim-reaper.
I was impressed with the police work. When a suspect insisted on wearing gloves whilst being interviewed he let it slip that he’d like a cigarette so the investigator slid the packet of cigarettes to him…
He also resorts to ethical yet immoral tactics to get important information. He needs a name but the person won’t offer it up, so he says that someone he loves has just been in a terrible accident and makes them guess who.
Paraphrasing:
“X?”
“No.”
“Y?”
“No.”
“Not Z, please god no. Not Z.”
“No-one has been in any accident but thanks for the name.”
So harsh. Loved it.
Also, I really sympathised with the murderer and the victims. None of them deserved what happened to them. But when a heart is broken, some people will stop at nothing to return the favour. Afterall, what’s the fun in physically hurting the person responsible for their loss when they could taunt them and then kill the person they love most.
A death that you probably wouldn’t find on a list of ‘1,000 ways to die’ becomes a most satisfying motive. Both are revealed early on. What’s left is the exacting of revenge. The earlier targets were struck unaware whereas those later on the list tried to evade the the metaphorical grim-reaper.
I was impressed with the police work. When a suspect insisted on wearing gloves whilst being interviewed he let it slip that he’d like a cigarette so the investigator slid the packet of cigarettes to him…
He also resorts to ethical yet immoral tactics to get important information. He needs a name but the person won’t offer it up, so he says that someone he loves has just been in a terrible accident and makes them guess who.
Paraphrasing:
“X?”
“No.”
“Y?”
“No.”
“Not Z, please god no. Not Z.”
“No-one has been in any accident but thanks for the name.”
So harsh. Loved it.
Also, I really sympathised with the murderer and the victims. None of them deserved what happened to them. But when a heart is broken, some people will stop at nothing to return the favour. Afterall, what’s the fun in physically hurting the person responsible for their loss when they could taunt them and then kill the person they love most.
November 27, 2011
On the eve of his wedding, Johnny Marr's fiancee is killed in a freak accident by a liquor bottle hurled out of the window of a small plane. Johnny snaps and goes on a psychopathic killing spree, tracking down the passengers of the plane and killing the most important woman in each man's world. Can Inspector Cameron stop Johnny before it's too late?
Rendezvous in Black has a lot in common with my favorite Woolrich book, The Bride Wore Black. Johnny systematically hunts down each man, figures out who the most important woman in his life is, and kills them in a variety of ways. Just like in The Bride Wore Black, the fun was trying to decide how he would do it. One thing that irked me was that all of his aliases had the initials JM. Way to camouflage yourself, you human chameleon!
Even though the plot was largely a retread of TBWB, it was still a good read. The cops kept getting closer but kept coming up short. A few of the male characters made stupid decisions right out of a bad movie. Woolrich's blatant misogyny was a little hard to ignore. Once again, the women were either bitches, whores, or doormats. Despite that, I did love the way Florence treated her husband, not to give anything away. Let's just saw she didn't go the Black Angel route when she found out he was cheating...
To sum it up, I liked Rendezvous in Black but I liked it better the first time Woolrich wrote it when it was called The Bride Wore Black.
Rendezvous in Black has a lot in common with my favorite Woolrich book, The Bride Wore Black. Johnny systematically hunts down each man, figures out who the most important woman in his life is, and kills them in a variety of ways. Just like in The Bride Wore Black, the fun was trying to decide how he would do it. One thing that irked me was that all of his aliases had the initials JM. Way to camouflage yourself, you human chameleon!
Even though the plot was largely a retread of TBWB, it was still a good read. The cops kept getting closer but kept coming up short. A few of the male characters made stupid decisions right out of a bad movie. Woolrich's blatant misogyny was a little hard to ignore. Once again, the women were either bitches, whores, or doormats. Despite that, I did love the way Florence treated her husband, not to give anything away. Let's just saw she didn't go the Black Angel route when she found out he was cheating...
To sum it up, I liked Rendezvous in Black but I liked it better the first time Woolrich wrote it when it was called The Bride Wore Black.
May 4, 2021
"How do you go about finding out who the best-loved woman in a guy's life is? Ask him?"
Another tale of revenge from Mr. Woolrich...how will it goes this time?
Information: Seemingly there is a Chinese translation of this book form mainland China and the title is '喪服之約'.
Outline of the story: A young man waited for his girlfriend for a nighttime rendezvous, they were about to get married and life couldn't be any sweeter for the young couple. Then the unthinkable happened: the young man waited and waited, only to learn a freak accident had killed his girl in this fatal night. After a period of heartbreak, the man decided to seek revenge against the five men he felt were responsible for the death of his lady love, 'justice' would be served by him killing the most beloved women in those men's lives.
Rate: 4.8 stars.
The author worked his charm again in this tale of tragic love and loss and revenge. As usual, the writing is the strongest point of this novel, not many people can write with such style and overwhelming atmosphere anymore!
The story is short, only 211 pages, but it's still a very well crafted, very ' to the point' and charming little tale of love and madness and criminal investigation. The characters, despite being a bunch living in the 1930s American society which is a bit remote from our time and practice, are still highly understandable. It's a very good example of writing characters and making them stand out in such limited screen time, yet it still feels like we can understand them nicely!
I really like how I can spend time in the mind of the young man and the police investigators (after they finally caught on that something was wrong in the murder of those women). The details are great too! What more can I ask for?
And revenge, like they said, is a dish best served cold.
And what is love anyway but the unattainable, the reaching out toward an illusion?
The ending scene is splendid, all ready for a movie adaptation; but on a realistic viewpoint, like this?
What makes a good noir is also in the attitude and the mystery! Everyone, especially the police investigators, feels like they are walking straight out of a black and white hard boiled movie! If hard boiled and romance noir is your thing, then you must check this one out!
As to the murder mystery part, it's surprisingly very clever, how the guy killed those women one by one and the cops took so long to realize something is amiss! And I found it all to be quite convening! Again I am impressed by how the detail of the investigation is written!
PS: let me tell you one thing: hoping to read more books during self-isolation and work-from-home period during the time of the freaking WuHan virus outbreak probably doesn't work so good, I still have ton of unread and half-finished books to work on. *sighs
May 13, 2023
02/2012
This story was very, very dark, and modern feeling (though it's clearly from the 1940s). Disturbingly dark.
This story was very, very dark, and modern feeling (though it's clearly from the 1940s). Disturbingly dark.
June 1, 2020
written in 1948.
the killer's name is johnny marr and one of his victim's names is morrissey.
???
the killer's name is johnny marr and one of his victim's names is morrissey.
???
October 16, 2023
Rendezvous In Black is a fine example of noir crime at its best. The darkness of a man’s mind as it wreaks dreadful revenge on others is graphically depicted in this revenge thriller. In many ways, it can be regarded as a reprise, of sorts, of The Bride Wore Black, Woolrich’s classic novel that was published years before this one. In that story a woman’s husband is killed in bizarre circumstances on her wedding day. She goes on to track down those responsible, killing them in retribution. Rendezvous In Black kind of reverses the roles and then gives the retribution side of things a savage twist.
Johnny Marr waits for his fiancee at their usual rendezvous spot. It’s May 31, the night before they are to be married but she doesn’t arrive. He moves to try to find her only to discover she’s the victim of a freak accident and has been killed. His descent into madness is graphically captured by Woolrich and his grief gradually morphs him into a coldly murderous animal.
He identifies the men responsible for his lover’s death. His plan is to track each and every one of them down and take from them the woman they love the most so they too can experience the same heartbreak he feels.
On May 31st, year after year, he takes his revenge on wives, lovers, daughters, whoever is deemed to be the most important person in each man’s life. The suspense builds over and over again. It’s unsure what form the revenge will take, nor do we know which direction it will come from. His calling cards are callous and without pity and only underlines just how empty his heart has become.
Remembering that this was written and is set in the 1940s, the language and some of the set ups were very much specific for its time. What’s timeless, though, is the overwhelming sense of foreboding that dominates much of the story. That and the fact that no-one really wants to pay attention to authority, regardless of the fact that maybe, just maybe, the police might have your best interests at heart.
This is a stark example of noir crime from one of the absolute masters and it simply oozes with bloody darkness and a relentlessness that ramps up the suspense as it goes. By the time we reach the 4th and 5th rendezvous there is a sense of inevitability about what the outcome is going to be and yet, still a flicker of a faint hope remains…but no, dark to the end.
Johnny Marr waits for his fiancee at their usual rendezvous spot. It’s May 31, the night before they are to be married but she doesn’t arrive. He moves to try to find her only to discover she’s the victim of a freak accident and has been killed. His descent into madness is graphically captured by Woolrich and his grief gradually morphs him into a coldly murderous animal.
He identifies the men responsible for his lover’s death. His plan is to track each and every one of them down and take from them the woman they love the most so they too can experience the same heartbreak he feels.
On May 31st, year after year, he takes his revenge on wives, lovers, daughters, whoever is deemed to be the most important person in each man’s life. The suspense builds over and over again. It’s unsure what form the revenge will take, nor do we know which direction it will come from. His calling cards are callous and without pity and only underlines just how empty his heart has become.
Remembering that this was written and is set in the 1940s, the language and some of the set ups were very much specific for its time. What’s timeless, though, is the overwhelming sense of foreboding that dominates much of the story. That and the fact that no-one really wants to pay attention to authority, regardless of the fact that maybe, just maybe, the police might have your best interests at heart.
This is a stark example of noir crime from one of the absolute masters and it simply oozes with bloody darkness and a relentlessness that ramps up the suspense as it goes. By the time we reach the 4th and 5th rendezvous there is a sense of inevitability about what the outcome is going to be and yet, still a flicker of a faint hope remains…but no, dark to the end.
October 9, 2025
4.5 stars
A crime classic. The overall rating on GR seems super low.
This is a revenge story broken into five parts. Each story is unique, other than the revenge part of course. I wonder if this was a fix-up novel as the sections seem to flow perfectly as short stories (the first three do for sure).
And just because he has a list of people to get revenge upon (and gets it) doesn’t mean it’s a take on The Count of Monte Cristo. Ok maybe a little.
I loved this book.
The last story isn’t great, and the ending is kinda meh. The rest of this book is a masterpiece of prose and suspense.
A crime classic. The overall rating on GR seems super low.
This is a revenge story broken into five parts. Each story is unique, other than the revenge part of course. I wonder if this was a fix-up novel as the sections seem to flow perfectly as short stories (the first three do for sure).
And just because he has a list of people to get revenge upon (and gets it) doesn’t mean it’s a take on The Count of Monte Cristo. Ok maybe a little.
I loved this book.
The last story isn’t great, and the ending is kinda meh. The rest of this book is a masterpiece of prose and suspense.
October 12, 2019
Đến bây giờ mình mới đọc cuốn này của bác Cornell Woolrich - một trong những tiểu thuyết gia trinh thám đen thành công nhất thập niên 40 - thì có vẻ hơi bị muộn và không kịp “bắt trend” rồi :D Cơ mà thời điểm này trong năm thì đọc cuốn này mới hợp ^^ Giờ là tháng 10, tháng Halloween, và “Điểm Hẹn Đen” đã mang lại đầy đủ phong vị hồi hộp u tối bí ẩn, “khuấy động” không khí đón chào Halloween sắp đến ^^
Về câu chuyện trong “Điểm Hẹn Đen” thì có thể tóm tắt như thế này: Johnny Marr cùng tình yêu của đời mình là nàng Dorothy chuẩn bị kết hôn. Hai người yêu nhau rất đậm sâu, và thường hẹn hò nhau ở trước hiệu dược phẩm. Đúng vào tối ngày 31 tháng 5, hai người có buổi hẹn hò, Dorothy trong lúc đứng chờ Johnny đã bị giết chết bởi một cái chai ném xuống từ một chiếc máy bay dân dụng đang bay trên bầu trời. Chuyến bay ấy chở 5 người đàn ông thuộc mọi độ tuổi và thành phần khác nhau, cùng lập thành một nhóm đi dã ngoại. Johnny vì quá đau lòng trước cái chết của vị hôn thê yêu dấu chỉ vài ngày trước khi họ thành hôn, nên đã quyết tâm trả thù 5 tên đàn ông trên máy bay (à và còn anh phi công máy bay đầu truyện bị đẩy vào đường ray xe lửa chết banh xác không biết có phải do Johnny trả thù luôn không nữa…). Và cách mà anh chàng này trả thù là gì? Đó chính là giết hại những người phụ nữ mà 5 tên đàn ông này yêu thương hết mực, bắt họ phải chịu đựng cảnh mất đi người phụ nữ yêu dấu và trải qua cảm giác đớn đau khôn nguôi như những gì Johnny đang trải qua.
Mình sẽ không đi vào chi tiết cách thức giết hại mỗi 5 người phụ nữ của 5 người đàn ông đó như thế nào, vì thế thì spoil truyện mất rồi. Nhưng phải thừa nhận rằng Johnny thực sự là một người bị lòng căm hận và khát khao trả thù dẫn lối hoàn toàn, trong cái cách mà anh ta lên kế hoạch một cách tỉ mỉ, kỹ lưỡng quá trình giết chóc của mình, đảm bảo rằng nó sẽ thành công mà anh không thể bị cảnh sát tóm. Từ khâu làm quen với các nạn nhân, sử dụng những nhân dạng, tên tuổi khác nhau, sắp đặt cho cái chết này giống như một vụ tai nạn nho nhỏ nhưng dẫn đến hậu quả lớn… Johnny luôn đạt được mục đích của mình đề ra, dù cho trong rất nhiều trường hợp, để thành công thì kế hoạch của Johnny có vẻ phụ thuộc vào sự xoay chuyển của lòng người nhiều hơn là tính logic của các sự việc. Hoặc đây là plot holes thường thấy của tác giả Cornell Woolrich, hoặc thực sự trên đời có thể tồn tại một người đàn ông như Johnny, có khả năng chi phối tình cảm, cảm xúc của phái nữ để thực hiện mục đích trả thù của mình.
Cho dù những tình tiết ấy có là plot holes hay không, thì mình vẫn rất thích quyển sách này. Vì sao? Vì cái cảm giác hồi hộp, căng thẳng, u tối mà tác giả đã gợi nên từ chính quá trình trả thù của Johnny. Mình cứ bị cuốn vào hành trình “tiến vào bóng đêm hận thù” đó, mà không mảy may đoán được rằng chiêu trò, kế hoạch, cách thức giết hại nào sẽ được Johnny áp dụng để trừ khử những người phụ nữ của những kẻ mà anh ta căm hận. Từng lớp lang của kế hoạch dần dần được hé lộ, cùng lúc đó là quá trình chạy đua với thời gian và với kẻ giết người của cảnh sát Cameron để tìm hiểu động cơ của gây án của Johnny và cố gắng ngăn chặn những cái chết tiếp theo. Liệu những người phụ nữ mà tội lỗi duy nhất là được 5 tên đàn ông trên chuyến bay ấy yêu thương hết mực có thể sống sót qua khỏi hiểm nguy đang chực chờ - một mối nguy không rõ hình rõ dạng từ một người đàn ông bề ngoài không có gì nổi bật như Johnny? Đó cũng là một cảm giác, một suy nghĩ sẽ có thể đeo đẳng độc giả khi đọc cuốn sách này, cảm giác không biết có nạn nhân nào thoát được nanh vuốt của sự trả thù hay không.
Trong suốt khoảng thời gian đọc sách, mình đứng về phía các nạn nhân, cầu mong cho họ có thể thoát khỏi định mệnh u tối đang chờ đón họ ở phía trước, và hy vọng Johnny sẽ không thể nào giết chết được hết tất cả bọn họ. Nhưng rồi ở chương cuối cùng, mình lại thấy thương cho Johnny, cho người đàn ông yêu say đắm người phụ nữ đã mất của mình, một tình yêu được chưng cất chỉ dành riêng cho hai người, được mẹ của Dorothy miêu tả lại qua những hành động lãng mạn mà Johnny đã làm cho Dorothy. Có một nỗi buồn khiến mình muốn khóc khi đọc những dòng ấy, khi nhận ra tên giết người gieo rắc kinh hoàng trong cuốn sách này rốt cuộc cũng chỉ là một kẻ yêu đến si mê, đến cuồng dại, đến mức biến tình yêu đó, và nỗi đau mất đi tình yêu đó trở thành thứ kim chỉ nam dẫn anh đến tham vọng trả thù mù quáng. Và rốt cuộc thì, có lẽ như chính cuốn sách đã chỉ ra, “tình yêu nào có khác gì nỗ lực theo đuổi những ảo ảnh không thể với tới?”
Về câu chuyện trong “Điểm Hẹn Đen” thì có thể tóm tắt như thế này: Johnny Marr cùng tình yêu của đời mình là nàng Dorothy chuẩn bị kết hôn. Hai người yêu nhau rất đậm sâu, và thường hẹn hò nhau ở trước hiệu dược phẩm. Đúng vào tối ngày 31 tháng 5, hai người có buổi hẹn hò, Dorothy trong lúc đứng chờ Johnny đã bị giết chết bởi một cái chai ném xuống từ một chiếc máy bay dân dụng đang bay trên bầu trời. Chuyến bay ấy chở 5 người đàn ông thuộc mọi độ tuổi và thành phần khác nhau, cùng lập thành một nhóm đi dã ngoại. Johnny vì quá đau lòng trước cái chết của vị hôn thê yêu dấu chỉ vài ngày trước khi họ thành hôn, nên đã quyết tâm trả thù 5 tên đàn ông trên máy bay (à và còn anh phi công máy bay đầu truyện bị đẩy vào đường ray xe lửa chết banh xác không biết có phải do Johnny trả thù luôn không nữa…). Và cách mà anh chàng này trả thù là gì? Đó chính là giết hại những người phụ nữ mà 5 tên đàn ông này yêu thương hết mực, bắt họ phải chịu đựng cảnh mất đi người phụ nữ yêu dấu và trải qua cảm giác đớn đau khôn nguôi như những gì Johnny đang trải qua.
Mình sẽ không đi vào chi tiết cách thức giết hại mỗi 5 người phụ nữ của 5 người đàn ông đó như thế nào, vì thế thì spoil truyện mất rồi. Nhưng phải thừa nhận rằng Johnny thực sự là một người bị lòng căm hận và khát khao trả thù dẫn lối hoàn toàn, trong cái cách mà anh ta lên kế hoạch một cách tỉ mỉ, kỹ lưỡng quá trình giết chóc của mình, đảm bảo rằng nó sẽ thành công mà anh không thể bị cảnh sát tóm. Từ khâu làm quen với các nạn nhân, sử dụng những nhân dạng, tên tuổi khác nhau, sắp đặt cho cái chết này giống như một vụ tai nạn nho nhỏ nhưng dẫn đến hậu quả lớn… Johnny luôn đạt được mục đích của mình đề ra, dù cho trong rất nhiều trường hợp, để thành công thì kế hoạch của Johnny có vẻ phụ thuộc vào sự xoay chuyển của lòng người nhiều hơn là tính logic của các sự việc. Hoặc đây là plot holes thường thấy của tác giả Cornell Woolrich, hoặc thực sự trên đời có thể tồn tại một người đàn ông như Johnny, có khả năng chi phối tình cảm, cảm xúc của phái nữ để thực hiện mục đích trả thù của mình.
Cho dù những tình tiết ấy có là plot holes hay không, thì mình vẫn rất thích quyển sách này. Vì sao? Vì cái cảm giác hồi hộp, căng thẳng, u tối mà tác giả đã gợi nên từ chính quá trình trả thù của Johnny. Mình cứ bị cuốn vào hành trình “tiến vào bóng đêm hận thù” đó, mà không mảy may đoán được rằng chiêu trò, kế hoạch, cách thức giết hại nào sẽ được Johnny áp dụng để trừ khử những người phụ nữ của những kẻ mà anh ta căm hận. Từng lớp lang của kế hoạch dần dần được hé lộ, cùng lúc đó là quá trình chạy đua với thời gian và với kẻ giết người của cảnh sát Cameron để tìm hiểu động cơ của gây án của Johnny và cố gắng ngăn chặn những cái chết tiếp theo. Liệu những người phụ nữ mà tội lỗi duy nhất là được 5 tên đàn ông trên chuyến bay ấy yêu thương hết mực có thể sống sót qua khỏi hiểm nguy đang chực chờ - một mối nguy không rõ hình rõ dạng từ một người đàn ông bề ngoài không có gì nổi bật như Johnny? Đó cũng là một cảm giác, một suy nghĩ sẽ có thể đeo đẳng độc giả khi đọc cuốn sách này, cảm giác không biết có nạn nhân nào thoát được nanh vuốt của sự trả thù hay không.
Trong suốt khoảng thời gian đọc sách, mình đứng về phía các nạn nhân, cầu mong cho họ có thể thoát khỏi định mệnh u tối đang chờ đón họ ở phía trước, và hy vọng Johnny sẽ không thể nào giết chết được hết tất cả bọn họ. Nhưng rồi ở chương cuối cùng, mình lại thấy thương cho Johnny, cho người đàn ông yêu say đắm người phụ nữ đã mất của mình, một tình yêu được chưng cất chỉ dành riêng cho hai người, được mẹ của Dorothy miêu tả lại qua những hành động lãng mạn mà Johnny đã làm cho Dorothy. Có một nỗi buồn khiến mình muốn khóc khi đọc những dòng ấy, khi nhận ra tên giết người gieo rắc kinh hoàng trong cuốn sách này rốt cuộc cũng chỉ là một kẻ yêu đến si mê, đến cuồng dại, đến mức biến tình yêu đó, và nỗi đau mất đi tình yêu đó trở thành thứ kim chỉ nam dẫn anh đến tham vọng trả thù mù quáng. Và rốt cuộc thì, có lẽ như chính cuốn sách đã chỉ ra, “tình yêu nào có khác gì nỗ lực theo đuổi những ảo ảnh không thể với tới?”
January 1, 2012
Cornell Woolrich came to my attention when Tom Piccirilli talked him up on his website, stating that Woolrich's take on noir is one of Piccirilli's favorites. Fast-forward about three years, move the scene to Classic Books, the Michigan Mecca for used books--and there I am, holding a copy of "Rendezvous in Black" with a big smile on my face.
Said smile remained throughout this entire read--which, happily, took place over a single afternoon that saw me with nothing to do. I devoured this wicked tale with a zeal approaching that of the book's protagonist--I mean, the book's villain--I mean, damn, which is it?
I love that the main character disappears from the story after the beginning, appearing instead as a mysterious agent bent on undoing the lives of a select group of men. With each story of revenge--gotta love how Woolrich broke these up into separate "rendezvouses"--the criminal methods that our law-breaking hero employs to get his mark become more diabolical, more sinister, and, for us cozy readers, more amazing.
Make no doubt about it, this is revenge-mania wrought with a crafty hand. Sure, the initial crime that inspires our man is horrible, his loss absolute; yet, before this story wraps, our wronged man has dealt more than his fair share of pain and suffering, with much more to come. It's terrible; it's inhumane; and it's delectable in ways that most of us do not like to admit.
Woolrich knew how to go there, and he goes all the way in this one. I loved this book, even as it's ramifications chill me to this day.
Said smile remained throughout this entire read--which, happily, took place over a single afternoon that saw me with nothing to do. I devoured this wicked tale with a zeal approaching that of the book's protagonist--I mean, the book's villain--I mean, damn, which is it?
I love that the main character disappears from the story after the beginning, appearing instead as a mysterious agent bent on undoing the lives of a select group of men. With each story of revenge--gotta love how Woolrich broke these up into separate "rendezvouses"--the criminal methods that our law-breaking hero employs to get his mark become more diabolical, more sinister, and, for us cozy readers, more amazing.
Make no doubt about it, this is revenge-mania wrought with a crafty hand. Sure, the initial crime that inspires our man is horrible, his loss absolute; yet, before this story wraps, our wronged man has dealt more than his fair share of pain and suffering, with much more to come. It's terrible; it's inhumane; and it's delectable in ways that most of us do not like to admit.
Woolrich knew how to go there, and he goes all the way in this one. I loved this book, even as it's ramifications chill me to this day.
March 4, 2008
Woolrich is one sick writer... or maybe not. But for sure this is truly one of most twisted novels ever. A young man (Johnny Marr!) is waiting for his wife, and what happens? Someone in a plane above throws over a liquour bottle and it hits and kills the poor girl. The moment it happens, Johnny Marr smashes his watch to keep that time forever. That image is so beautiful and goth like. So basically he gets a list of those who are on that flight and goes after the girlfriend, wife, or kid. Just to make them feel the pain that he felt. Hmm, thinking about it this is a ten-star book. And Cornell Woolrich is really great.
April 25, 2019
#2019ReadingChallenge #nonPopSugar
Hưm, đọc Thược dược đen với Kẻ báo thù trước, đọc đến quyển này thì không khép được nó vào trinh thám noir luôn. Cái không khí trong Điểm hẹn đen tuy là chết chóc cùng hận thù chồng chất đấy, nhưng giọng văn của tác giả lại quá mềm mại và lãng mạn, phần nào đã làm át đi cái sự đen tối đó rồi. Thực ra theo như mình cảm nhận thì là át khá nhiều đó. Lắm lúc đọc như thể đọc văn học lãng mạn cổ điển vậy. Và nói thật là mình không thích điều đó. Câu chuyện thiếu mất sự gai góc mà mình trông đợi ở thể loại này.
Thứ nữa phải nói đến là tuy rằng xếp Điểm hẹn đen vào mục sách trinh thám, song chất trinh thám của nó thật sự không nổi bật. Kiểu cũng như việc bác sĩ dùng những từ ngữ dễ hiểu để giải thích bệnh tình cho người nhà bệnh nhân, Cornell Woolrich giống một người kể chuyện điềm đạm cần mẫn điểm qua tất cả các sự kiện chính của câu chuyện theo một cách rất lớp lang, và chỉ dừng lại ở đó không hơn. Không có thủ pháp, không có mánh lới nào được nhắc đến cả. Làm thế nào nhân vật chính trả thù trót lọt, làm thế nào anh ta thoát thân sau khi gây ra bao nhiêu cái án, anh ta lần theo dấu vết kẻ thù ra sao... tất cả không được tiết lộ. Điều này cũng được áp dụng đối với phía cảnh sát. Chúng ta, những độc giả, chính xác là những kẻ ngôi thứ ba đứng ở giữa - biết tất cả mà cũng chả biết gì.
Nhìn chung thì sách khá dễ đọc. Mà không, là rất dễ ấy. Dễ hơn nhiều so với Thược dược đen và Kẻ báo thù. Mình chỉ hơi muốn lật bàn vì cách Dorothy chết khá là... ờm... nhảm nhí. Và cái anh Johnny Marr nọ cứ nhắm mắt xuống đao với hết cả đám kia, bất kể việc kẻ tội đồ thật sự chỉ có một. Lạy Chúa, may mà cái máy bay chỉ có bằng đó người, không thì đúng là một cuộc thảm sát rồi.
Hưm, đọc Thược dược đen với Kẻ báo thù trước, đọc đến quyển này thì không khép được nó vào trinh thám noir luôn. Cái không khí trong Điểm hẹn đen tuy là chết chóc cùng hận thù chồng chất đấy, nhưng giọng văn của tác giả lại quá mềm mại và lãng mạn, phần nào đã làm át đi cái sự đen tối đó rồi. Thực ra theo như mình cảm nhận thì là át khá nhiều đó. Lắm lúc đọc như thể đọc văn học lãng mạn cổ điển vậy. Và nói thật là mình không thích điều đó. Câu chuyện thiếu mất sự gai góc mà mình trông đợi ở thể loại này.
Thứ nữa phải nói đến là tuy rằng xếp Điểm hẹn đen vào mục sách trinh thám, song chất trinh thám của nó thật sự không nổi bật. Kiểu cũng như việc bác sĩ dùng những từ ngữ dễ hiểu để giải thích bệnh tình cho người nhà bệnh nhân, Cornell Woolrich giống một người kể chuyện điềm đạm cần mẫn điểm qua tất cả các sự kiện chính của câu chuyện theo một cách rất lớp lang, và chỉ dừng lại ở đó không hơn. Không có thủ pháp, không có mánh lới nào được nhắc đến cả. Làm thế nào nhân vật chính trả thù trót lọt, làm thế nào anh ta thoát thân sau khi gây ra bao nhiêu cái án, anh ta lần theo dấu vết kẻ thù ra sao... tất cả không được tiết lộ. Điều này cũng được áp dụng đối với phía cảnh sát. Chúng ta, những độc giả, chính xác là những kẻ ngôi thứ ba đứng ở giữa - biết tất cả mà cũng chả biết gì.
Nhìn chung thì sách khá dễ đọc. Mà không, là rất dễ ấy. Dễ hơn nhiều so với Thược dược đen và Kẻ báo thù. Mình chỉ hơi muốn lật bàn vì cách Dorothy chết khá là... ờm... nhảm nhí. Và cái anh Johnny Marr nọ cứ nhắm mắt xuống đao với hết cả đám kia, bất kể việc kẻ tội đồ thật sự chỉ có một. Lạy Chúa, may mà cái máy bay chỉ có bằng đó người, không thì đúng là một cuộc thảm sát rồi.
February 21, 2020
Đây được coi là phiên bản nâng cấp của "Cô dâu đen". Hung thủ biết ngay từ đầu nhưng người đọc vẫn bị cuốn theo quá trình báo thù. Hắn thoắt ẩn thoắt hiện, có lúc xuất hiện lặng lẽ tiếp cận con mồi dưới hình hài khác, và sau đó biến mất như một bóng ma. Các vụ án đều còn là những mối tình với độ phức tạp, ám ảnh tăng dần. Woolrich với văn phong chậm rãi nhưng đầy tinh tế dẫn dắt người đoc đi qua các cung bậc cảm xúc khác nhau, từ hồi hộp đến ngậm ngùi thương xót cho những nạn nhân và cả hung thủ. Và sau cùng cái chết đã giải thoát cho tất cả.
Ko đủ từ ngữ để phân tích sự tinh tếtrong câu văn cũng như độ hấp dẫn của truyện. Tóm gọn là Hay. Chấm cá nhân 8/10
Ko đủ từ ngữ để phân tích sự tinh tếtrong câu văn cũng như độ hấp dẫn của truyện. Tóm gọn là Hay. Chấm cá nhân 8/10
Read
September 15, 2007On the surface, Rendezvous in Black might look like one of the coldest stories ever told. An ordinary young man meets an ordinary young woman every night outside of a drugstore window. One day he is a couple of minutes late, and by the time he arrives she has been horrendously killed. Completely devastated by the experience, the boy is unable to move on, waiting at the same place each night, eventually deciding to make ‘them’ feel what he feels. He finds a list of five passengers on a plane, men who we presume he believes were responsible (though until the very end we have no idea how or why). The book is divided into primarily five rendezvous, as he meticulously kills the most loved woman in each man’s life in a kind of poetic justice, once per year, always on May 31st, the day before the June in which he himself was supposed to marry.
What prevents it from being a cold novel are the perspectives from which Woolrich tells the story. Each rendezvous is not unlike a short story (which Woolrich was quite prolific in writing), in part because the perspective only fleetingly becomes that of the killer. Instead, each episode is told from the perspective of the man, or sometimes the woman, who suffers the most from his actions. Woolrich creates no blood lust within the reader (if anything, it’s an anti-revenge novel), but subjectively explores the emotions that overcome each victim, be it the uncompromising desire of a girl in love, the guilt that a married man carrying on an affair comes to grips with, or the intense fear of a blind woman who essentially sees and understands her fate.
Whenever the killer finishes one of his murders, he leaves a note to the man along the lines of, “Now you know what it feels like.” It’s not coldness. His mad revenge is actually a way of connecting, a way of evoking the same emotions within others – there’s a tenderness underlying it all that is beautifully rendered in the final reunion. And everyone, the killer and the victims, all have one thing in common: they are all the random victims of a fate that nightmarishly draws them together.
What prevents it from being a cold novel are the perspectives from which Woolrich tells the story. Each rendezvous is not unlike a short story (which Woolrich was quite prolific in writing), in part because the perspective only fleetingly becomes that of the killer. Instead, each episode is told from the perspective of the man, or sometimes the woman, who suffers the most from his actions. Woolrich creates no blood lust within the reader (if anything, it’s an anti-revenge novel), but subjectively explores the emotions that overcome each victim, be it the uncompromising desire of a girl in love, the guilt that a married man carrying on an affair comes to grips with, or the intense fear of a blind woman who essentially sees and understands her fate.
Whenever the killer finishes one of his murders, he leaves a note to the man along the lines of, “Now you know what it feels like.” It’s not coldness. His mad revenge is actually a way of connecting, a way of evoking the same emotions within others – there’s a tenderness underlying it all that is beautifully rendered in the final reunion. And everyone, the killer and the victims, all have one thing in common: they are all the random victims of a fate that nightmarishly draws them together.
March 28, 2016
"Love isn't like concrete that's poured just once, and then forever after stays hard and fast. Love is fluid, and once in awhile it leaks out before you can stop it and runs away."
5 vụ giết người.
Đầu tiên, hắn vô hình, chỉ hiển hiện sau một thanh đinh đặt sai chỗ. Kế đó, hắn hiện hữu hơn, hắn bắt đầu có hình hài - một kẻ sát nhân giấu mặt. Rồi hắn bắt đầu xuất hiện như một nhân vật thực, hắn trở thành một phần của tấn kịch, hắn tham gia vào nó, chơi đùa trong nó. Nhưng đến cuối cùng, như thể coi việc dạo chơi của bản thân đã đến hồi kết thúc, hắn lại trở thành vô danh và âm thầm - trong bóng tối - thực hiện tội ác.
Tác giả có cách kể và dẫn dắt đầy lôi cuốn. Không vội vã, không mau mải, cuộc truy tìm kẻ sát nhân trải ra một cách bình thản, từ tốn, chỉ như một cuộc thả bộ kiếm tìm gì đó không phải một kẻ giết người. Hắn ẩn mình sau bóng tối, chỉ đây đó lộ ra một cử chỉ hay một nụ cười, đủ để người đọc biết hắn đang tồn tại ở đó, trả thù những kẻ đã cướp lẽ sống duy nhất của đời hắn.
Tôi thích cách tác giả chơi đùa với ngôn từ, rất nhẹ nhàng, uyển chuyển nhưng không làm giảm đi độ lôi cuốn của một câu chuyện trinh thám. Dầu có vẻ tác giả hơi thù địch với phái nữ khi để cho hầu hết các nhân vật nữ của mình làm những kẻ phản bội, còn số phận của những gã đàn ông thì lại quá khổ đau vì si tình, thì đây là một cuốn sách thú vị về mô tả tâm lý nhân vật, những biến chuyển, những sự thay đổi từ suy nghĩ tới hành động của từng nhân vật.
Một cuốn sách đáng thưởng thức.
5 vụ giết người.
Đầu tiên, hắn vô hình, chỉ hiển hiện sau một thanh đinh đặt sai chỗ. Kế đó, hắn hiện hữu hơn, hắn bắt đầu có hình hài - một kẻ sát nhân giấu mặt. Rồi hắn bắt đầu xuất hiện như một nhân vật thực, hắn trở thành một phần của tấn kịch, hắn tham gia vào nó, chơi đùa trong nó. Nhưng đến cuối cùng, như thể coi việc dạo chơi của bản thân đã đến hồi kết thúc, hắn lại trở thành vô danh và âm thầm - trong bóng tối - thực hiện tội ác.
Tác giả có cách kể và dẫn dắt đầy lôi cuốn. Không vội vã, không mau mải, cuộc truy tìm kẻ sát nhân trải ra một cách bình thản, từ tốn, chỉ như một cuộc thả bộ kiếm tìm gì đó không phải một kẻ giết người. Hắn ẩn mình sau bóng tối, chỉ đây đó lộ ra một cử chỉ hay một nụ cười, đủ để người đọc biết hắn đang tồn tại ở đó, trả thù những kẻ đã cướp lẽ sống duy nhất của đời hắn.
Tôi thích cách tác giả chơi đùa với ngôn từ, rất nhẹ nhàng, uyển chuyển nhưng không làm giảm đi độ lôi cuốn của một câu chuyện trinh thám. Dầu có vẻ tác giả hơi thù địch với phái nữ khi để cho hầu hết các nhân vật nữ của mình làm những kẻ phản bội, còn số phận của những gã đàn ông thì lại quá khổ đau vì si tình, thì đây là một cuốn sách thú vị về mô tả tâm lý nhân vật, những biến chuyển, những sự thay đổi từ suy nghĩ tới hành động của từng nhân vật.
Một cuốn sách đáng thưởng thức.
November 2, 2020
The character of Rusty was very well thought out and written. Rusty was brilliant, light years ahead of its time, although I think many people like them have always existed, just Woolrich writes about Rusty in a brilliant way.
Woolrich is one of these genius writers. There's something about his style that's different from others'. That being said, I don't like how his stories start with the same kind of pattern - In the beginning it's like he's playing with a few very ordinary murder scenes, the kind you've read and seen (on TV hopefully, and not irl!) already and they don't particularly grab my attention, so getting into the story is very hard for me.
But once Woolrich gets good, he gets really really good. He has these twists that others haven't tried out or not at least in the same scope, and he has a different way of approaching the murders - from the perspective of the victims.
His detectives are a little different too, they're very hands on, they're almost like average joes that figure the murders out with very basic information, they don't have any gimmicks and they're not stereotypical "tough guys".
The ending in the cabin was intense, terrifying. It was so so so good.
Unfortunately, to balance out with the lack luster beginning, the very last few pages were a let down so I'm gonna balance the whole thing out with 3 stars.
Woolrich is one of these genius writers. There's something about his style that's different from others'. That being said, I don't like how his stories start with the same kind of pattern - In the beginning it's like he's playing with a few very ordinary murder scenes, the kind you've read and seen (on TV hopefully, and not irl!) already and they don't particularly grab my attention, so getting into the story is very hard for me.
But once Woolrich gets good, he gets really really good. He has these twists that others haven't tried out or not at least in the same scope, and he has a different way of approaching the murders - from the perspective of the victims.
His detectives are a little different too, they're very hands on, they're almost like average joes that figure the murders out with very basic information, they don't have any gimmicks and they're not stereotypical "tough guys".
The ending in the cabin was intense, terrifying. It was so so so good.
Unfortunately, to balance out with the lack luster beginning, the very last few pages were a let down so I'm gonna balance the whole thing out with 3 stars.
April 27, 2024
I can see why Hitchcock liked this… hints of Kim Novak in the final scene….
Anyway — really 3.5 rounded up or down, as you like it
Anyway — really 3.5 rounded up or down, as you like it
April 16, 2018
Very late to the party here of reading anything by Cornell Woolrich - but now I've made that move. I've known of Woolrich for years - have seen his name during the running of many opening screen credits. Films based on Woolrich stories include 'Rear Window', 'Phantom Lady', 'The Window', 'The Night Has a Thousand Eyes', 'The Bride Wore Black' - and on and on and on. It's likely I'll return to his work, now that I've read this terrific novel.
'Rendezvous in Black' is a unique 'revenge' tale that hinges heavily on contrivance. Much of what happens in the plot is patently absurd - yet it all plays out in what is to be taken as complete realism. For its suspense to work on you, you will have to suspend a fair amount of disbelief. But, if you're able to do that (and I managed quite easily), you will find yourself on a thrill ride of tension; a ride that increases in speed as it reaches its conclusion.
Even when the bulk of the story is over, Woolrich still has one more effective thrill in the denouement.
In the paperback's introduction by Richard Dooling, we learn that Woolrich seemed to suffer considerably from low self-esteem. Not long before his death, he told his literary agent, "What I was was a guy would 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."
In 'RIB', Woolrich tells quite a bit of truth about the human condition. He does this while constructing an unnerving tale in a manner that has a self-knowing quality - as though the author were getting considerable satisfaction from the shifting avenues of his storytelling. (This was one of Woolrich's personal favorites among his books.) His language can be playful ("He hated soldiers with woebegone faces. In fact he hated soldiers with faces. In fact he hated soldiers. In fact he hated."). It also fairly overflows with evocative descriptions of light and dark that play on feelings of reprieve and dread.
But above everything else, there is potent suspense. The book is a mere seven chapters - and chapter six alone is among the most suspenseful pieces of writing I've encountered.
On its own terms, "RIB' is almost breathlessly masterful. I more or less read it in one sitting, since I could not pull myself away.
'Rendezvous in Black' is a unique 'revenge' tale that hinges heavily on contrivance. Much of what happens in the plot is patently absurd - yet it all plays out in what is to be taken as complete realism. For its suspense to work on you, you will have to suspend a fair amount of disbelief. But, if you're able to do that (and I managed quite easily), you will find yourself on a thrill ride of tension; a ride that increases in speed as it reaches its conclusion.
Even when the bulk of the story is over, Woolrich still has one more effective thrill in the denouement.
In the paperback's introduction by Richard Dooling, we learn that Woolrich seemed to suffer considerably from low self-esteem. Not long before his death, he told his literary agent, "What I was was a guy would 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."
In 'RIB', Woolrich tells quite a bit of truth about the human condition. He does this while constructing an unnerving tale in a manner that has a self-knowing quality - as though the author were getting considerable satisfaction from the shifting avenues of his storytelling. (This was one of Woolrich's personal favorites among his books.) His language can be playful ("He hated soldiers with woebegone faces. In fact he hated soldiers with faces. In fact he hated soldiers. In fact he hated."). It also fairly overflows with evocative descriptions of light and dark that play on feelings of reprieve and dread.
But above everything else, there is potent suspense. The book is a mere seven chapters - and chapter six alone is among the most suspenseful pieces of writing I've encountered.
On its own terms, "RIB' is almost breathlessly masterful. I more or less read it in one sitting, since I could not pull myself away.
April 15, 2009
The saddest revenge story ever written? Johnny Marr, an almost anonymous young man in middle America (think Our Town), must find the man who killed his fiancée and make the killer suffer as he has suffered. But there are five possible killers, so they must all suffer. The plots that Johnny executes against them require near-omniscience on his part. Never mind that Johnny could have identified the actual killer much more easily--for better or for worse, Woolrich demands that you grant him absurdities.
First reading: circa 2004
Second reading: 13 April 2009
First reading: circa 2004
Second reading: 13 April 2009
Want to read
April 11, 2016This is copy 40 of 300 signed and numbered copies, Signed by:
William F. Nolan (Introduction)
Matt Mahurin (Cover Artist)
Jacob McMurray (Jacket Design)
William F. Nolan (Introduction)
Matt Mahurin (Cover Artist)
Jacob McMurray (Jacket Design)
September 15, 2022
We will get the obvious joke out of the way first: this is not the secret origin of the legendary lead guitarist of seminal British band the Smiths.
In fact guitarist Johnny Marr (birth name: John Martin Maher) does not appear to have taken his stage name from the antagonist of Woolrich's 1948 novel (nor does he appear to have even read it, or at least he's kept it to himself) and yes, I did a search for that so you don't have to. Which is fine as the Johnny Marr of this novel spends about all of this time throughout this novel either killing perfect strangers, or plotting to do so. And he's good at it!
Why is he doing this? If the explanation of "Because he's in a Cornell Woolrich novel" doesn't suffice let's go into a bit more detail. Our boy Johnny is an otherwise normal lad who is head over heels in love with his best girl. So in love that even the night before their wedding he insists on meeting at their usual spot outside the local drugstore, where they can go off and have swingin' 1940s style clean fun.
It’s a cute idea . . . except she doesn't survive it.
Its not Johnny's fault, its just an extremely freak accident that takes her away from him, an accident caused by people who were careless but certainly weren't intending on killing anyone and don't even seem aware that they have (and for a good chunk of the novel it seems likely they have no idea why any of this is happening to them). But for poor Johnny it’s the end of his world and as much as he'd like to reverse what happened that's obviously not possible. So he does the next worst thing.
As anyone who has lost a loved one can attest (and sadly, that's probably a good chunk of people reading this) there's coping, which is hard, and then there's whatever the hell Johnny is doing here. Because somehow grief has not only unhinged him but also turned him into a psychotic genius at the art of premeditated murder. And thus our story begins, already on the dark path down.
If you're into pulp novels chances are you've probably heard of Cornell Woolrich and if you haven't heard of Woolrich you've probably encountered something adapted from his works or inspired by him, unless the only thing you watch is, I don't know, reality dance competitions. A failed "serious" novelist in the Twenties and Thirties, he decided to harness all the bitterness inside of him (which appeared to be considerable) and charge full-bore into pulp and detective novels. Fortunately for him he was good at it and soon enough you had directors like Francois Truffaut turning two of his novels into films and one of his short stories being adapted into a Hitchcock film you might have heard of, "Rear Window" (later on it would be the subject of a Supreme Court case involving copyright but Woolrich was long dead by then). Like a lot of pulp writers he wrote like a fiend, churning out novels and stories under a variety of pseudonyms. Unlike a lot of pulp writers he actually became fairly wealthy, although unfortunately like a lot of pulp writers he abused alcohol. A later leg amputation courtesy of an untreated foot infection (he was diabetic, so the message from the healthcare professional in me: check your feet!) did absolutely nothing to improve his mood and he eventually became a bitter rich guy hiding in a nice hotel, eventually dying there Eugene O'Neill style.
While he's sometimes mentioned in the same breath as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett he didn't garner the lasting fame of either, with a lot of his books staying out of print for quite a while, only sneaking back in here and there (my edition is from 2004) so he definitely doesn't have the household recognition that the other legends have. For me, Chandler still ranks the highest . . . nobody is better able to lyrically depict the moral ambiguities of an era's underbelly via a guide so wounded by the overlapping greys of right and wrong that it sometimes seems like he's navigating by following his own trail of blood.
Woolrich, at least from this novel, isn't interested in any of that. What he does want to do is lock you in a car, turn off the headlights and point the vehicle at a dark woods before muttering "Here we go", blindfolding himself and accelerating beyond all vestiges of sanity right into the tangled mess. He's not here to make you feel good, he's not here to give you heroes, he's not here for logic and he's definitely not here to be reassuring. He just wants you to white knuckle your way through the book and I'll have to admit, while this book isn't scary in the conventional sense, its definitely nerve-racking in a way that Chandler never is.
Part of that is the book's unrelenting focus on drilling down to the dark stuff even as it occasionally wants to distract you and pretend that something a bit nicer is happening, which only makes it worse when the book decides to dispense with the illusion. Johnny, as part of his new super-genius capabilities is able to determine which men were responsible for the death of his beloved. So instead of doing the modern thing and just suing them (or create fake social media accounts to harass them into insanity) he figures he'll give them a taste of their own medicine, year in and year out. Thus, each year, on the anniversary of his true love's demise, he goes out to kill someone close to one of the men, only leaving behind a note that basically says "How does it feel?"
Yes, he's essentially a serial killer (or a Batman villain dialed up a few notches) but the fun part here is how Woolrich lets Johnny recede into the background, not even existing as a dark smear of movement underneath the water until it suddenly becomes very clear what kind of danger someone in is. So after Johnny concocts his revenge masterplan we're given front row seats to watching it play out over and over again in five different scenarios that are exercises in waiting for the other shoe to drop, only the shoe is a coin and you're standing at the bottom of the Empire State Building bracing yourself and wondering if you'll be unlucky enough to understand how much it's going to hurt before the lights go out.
This is one of those books that is going to coast on mood and that mood is one of deep, unrelenting dread. The thing with Woolrich here is how he ramps things up fairly slowly . . . we get the death of Johnny's great love early on, then hints that he might be thinking about doing something about it and then suddenly . . . the first person dies. But not in an obvious "run them down in a car" sort of way, but honestly a somewhat convoluted method that probably only works because the plot requires it to. But once that happens it kind of doesn't matter . . . the tone is set and off we go.
One thing you have to buy when reading this novel is that at some point Johnny has acquired what Liam Neeson might call "a special set of skills" that somehow gives him Human Target levels of blending in and doing whatever it needs to get the job done. Whether its inhuman charms when it comes to seduction or the ability to pass himself off as a worker in nearly every type of job or to appear and disappear like a kind of phantom after a while he starts to operate less like a person and more like a walking deus ex machina, some weird killing force of nature. Or a comet, I guess, since he's so regular.
Woolrich makes this work by keeping the "how" of it pretty vague . . . with Johnny in the background his machinations are mostly invisible so you have to wonder just what he's up to when everyone else is wandering around blissfully unaware of what's to come. But once you start to get a feel for what's happening his appearances are often completely unnerving (in the Third Rendezvous he stretches the tension to ridiculous lengths by letting it play to the point where its nearly exhausting) because it starts a mental countdown to the Bad Thing that's about to happen. And I give Woolrich credit for keeping all the deaths practically offscreen without everyone walking in on the aftermath . . . almost everyone dies in a peacefully violent fashion and its somehow more gruesome without blood splattered everywhere. Prior to it Johnny acts a psychologically maestro, stringing everyone along until he can take it all away at the worst possible moment.
Its perhaps fitting in this world that the police are effectively useless . . . while Chandler had Marlowe to at least puzzle things out and set the parameters of how bad it could get, here the cops are mostly floundering around, denying there is a problem for the longest time and even when they start figuring it out always seemingly a step or two behind from the fiendishly clever and invincible Johnny, who is so singleminded he can't be stopped. The one detective we follow seems beaten down before the case even starts and his eventual revelations are trying to gather smoke, a delay of the inevitable. Knowing you're going to die doesn't change the fact that you're going to. By the time they vaguely understand what's going on they might as well be the victims of prophecy in some ancient Greek drama.
Each "rendezvous" is a little worse than the one before, culminating in the last, which is just awful. With the last victim finally convinced of the target and what's to come, they flee as best they can and Woolrich drags it out for the longest time, playing a sick game of push and pull as they get ahead, fall back, get ahead again and just when it finally feels like they might have succeeded he drops the hammer in what for me was the more stomach churning murder of them all, a blind woman's tracing of an escape where every door only takes her back inside her own abattoir. Woolrich's prose isn't often pretty, too often its pulpishly blunt or riding the wrong edge of hysterics but there are moments where all those unpretty edges lock together and achieve a horrible chiseled beauty. It may not be a gift everyone wants, but its definitely a gift here.
What I find fascinating about this book is how perfunctory it feels, with every bit of possible fat trimmed away until only toughness is left, and how weary it feels as well. At times it feels like everyone is dead before the book even starts, or that they've all done this before and are condemned to keep repeating and even as they know in the backs of their heads how its going to go they have no choice but to play their parts. Even the ending isn't as much a relief as just one more thing to be checked off the list (and anyone who has watched 1940s noir films will find the finale style here familiar . . . a thundering hail of bullets, a pithy remark and roll credits!) . . . with all the worst already done its not even a measure of balance but merely a way to feel that the universe still has some sliver of justice woven into its fraying fibers.
I don't know if this is Woolrich's best book or if everything else is more of the same (I have a couple more coming up so I guess I'll find out) but there's a laserlike directness to this that can easily get ahold of you if you're so inclined toward this style of writing. It feels like the kind of work that other writers parody, or try to seriously mimic but there's something utterly lived-in about this that makes it stand out for me above any followers or satirists, the kind of book that you pull out of a very dark place, not because you're trying to find a way to the light but more like a tiny message in a bottle shot up to give anyone who finds it a glimpse of what it might be like down there. It’s the kind of world that's okay to visit, but you definitely don't want to live there, which gives you something in common with the people in the book because they don't want to live there either. But they don't have a choice and seem to know it and hate it every single minute. The randomness of our world is scary at times (okay, all the time) but in Woolrich's world every act has deadly consequences and those consequences lead to further acts and it never ends because whatever diseased engine powers that world doesn't know how to stop and doesn't want to stop. There's no nice days, only preludes and once you catch the feel of it on the wind there's no relaxing, ever. Two hundred brisk pages feels like an eternity in its own way once you understand there's no living, just existing. And if Woolrich made a place where even the oxygen you breathe is coated in sandpaper there are times when it seems like not only did he drop his suitcases down and decided "I'm home" but held his breath so as to force himself to gasp and drive the pain in deeper.
In fact guitarist Johnny Marr (birth name: John Martin Maher) does not appear to have taken his stage name from the antagonist of Woolrich's 1948 novel (nor does he appear to have even read it, or at least he's kept it to himself) and yes, I did a search for that so you don't have to. Which is fine as the Johnny Marr of this novel spends about all of this time throughout this novel either killing perfect strangers, or plotting to do so. And he's good at it!
Why is he doing this? If the explanation of "Because he's in a Cornell Woolrich novel" doesn't suffice let's go into a bit more detail. Our boy Johnny is an otherwise normal lad who is head over heels in love with his best girl. So in love that even the night before their wedding he insists on meeting at their usual spot outside the local drugstore, where they can go off and have swingin' 1940s style clean fun.
It’s a cute idea . . . except she doesn't survive it.
Its not Johnny's fault, its just an extremely freak accident that takes her away from him, an accident caused by people who were careless but certainly weren't intending on killing anyone and don't even seem aware that they have (and for a good chunk of the novel it seems likely they have no idea why any of this is happening to them). But for poor Johnny it’s the end of his world and as much as he'd like to reverse what happened that's obviously not possible. So he does the next worst thing.
As anyone who has lost a loved one can attest (and sadly, that's probably a good chunk of people reading this) there's coping, which is hard, and then there's whatever the hell Johnny is doing here. Because somehow grief has not only unhinged him but also turned him into a psychotic genius at the art of premeditated murder. And thus our story begins, already on the dark path down.
If you're into pulp novels chances are you've probably heard of Cornell Woolrich and if you haven't heard of Woolrich you've probably encountered something adapted from his works or inspired by him, unless the only thing you watch is, I don't know, reality dance competitions. A failed "serious" novelist in the Twenties and Thirties, he decided to harness all the bitterness inside of him (which appeared to be considerable) and charge full-bore into pulp and detective novels. Fortunately for him he was good at it and soon enough you had directors like Francois Truffaut turning two of his novels into films and one of his short stories being adapted into a Hitchcock film you might have heard of, "Rear Window" (later on it would be the subject of a Supreme Court case involving copyright but Woolrich was long dead by then). Like a lot of pulp writers he wrote like a fiend, churning out novels and stories under a variety of pseudonyms. Unlike a lot of pulp writers he actually became fairly wealthy, although unfortunately like a lot of pulp writers he abused alcohol. A later leg amputation courtesy of an untreated foot infection (he was diabetic, so the message from the healthcare professional in me: check your feet!) did absolutely nothing to improve his mood and he eventually became a bitter rich guy hiding in a nice hotel, eventually dying there Eugene O'Neill style.
While he's sometimes mentioned in the same breath as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett he didn't garner the lasting fame of either, with a lot of his books staying out of print for quite a while, only sneaking back in here and there (my edition is from 2004) so he definitely doesn't have the household recognition that the other legends have. For me, Chandler still ranks the highest . . . nobody is better able to lyrically depict the moral ambiguities of an era's underbelly via a guide so wounded by the overlapping greys of right and wrong that it sometimes seems like he's navigating by following his own trail of blood.
Woolrich, at least from this novel, isn't interested in any of that. What he does want to do is lock you in a car, turn off the headlights and point the vehicle at a dark woods before muttering "Here we go", blindfolding himself and accelerating beyond all vestiges of sanity right into the tangled mess. He's not here to make you feel good, he's not here to give you heroes, he's not here for logic and he's definitely not here to be reassuring. He just wants you to white knuckle your way through the book and I'll have to admit, while this book isn't scary in the conventional sense, its definitely nerve-racking in a way that Chandler never is.
Part of that is the book's unrelenting focus on drilling down to the dark stuff even as it occasionally wants to distract you and pretend that something a bit nicer is happening, which only makes it worse when the book decides to dispense with the illusion. Johnny, as part of his new super-genius capabilities is able to determine which men were responsible for the death of his beloved. So instead of doing the modern thing and just suing them (or create fake social media accounts to harass them into insanity) he figures he'll give them a taste of their own medicine, year in and year out. Thus, each year, on the anniversary of his true love's demise, he goes out to kill someone close to one of the men, only leaving behind a note that basically says "How does it feel?"
Yes, he's essentially a serial killer (or a Batman villain dialed up a few notches) but the fun part here is how Woolrich lets Johnny recede into the background, not even existing as a dark smear of movement underneath the water until it suddenly becomes very clear what kind of danger someone in is. So after Johnny concocts his revenge masterplan we're given front row seats to watching it play out over and over again in five different scenarios that are exercises in waiting for the other shoe to drop, only the shoe is a coin and you're standing at the bottom of the Empire State Building bracing yourself and wondering if you'll be unlucky enough to understand how much it's going to hurt before the lights go out.
This is one of those books that is going to coast on mood and that mood is one of deep, unrelenting dread. The thing with Woolrich here is how he ramps things up fairly slowly . . . we get the death of Johnny's great love early on, then hints that he might be thinking about doing something about it and then suddenly . . . the first person dies. But not in an obvious "run them down in a car" sort of way, but honestly a somewhat convoluted method that probably only works because the plot requires it to. But once that happens it kind of doesn't matter . . . the tone is set and off we go.
One thing you have to buy when reading this novel is that at some point Johnny has acquired what Liam Neeson might call "a special set of skills" that somehow gives him Human Target levels of blending in and doing whatever it needs to get the job done. Whether its inhuman charms when it comes to seduction or the ability to pass himself off as a worker in nearly every type of job or to appear and disappear like a kind of phantom after a while he starts to operate less like a person and more like a walking deus ex machina, some weird killing force of nature. Or a comet, I guess, since he's so regular.
Woolrich makes this work by keeping the "how" of it pretty vague . . . with Johnny in the background his machinations are mostly invisible so you have to wonder just what he's up to when everyone else is wandering around blissfully unaware of what's to come. But once you start to get a feel for what's happening his appearances are often completely unnerving (in the Third Rendezvous he stretches the tension to ridiculous lengths by letting it play to the point where its nearly exhausting) because it starts a mental countdown to the Bad Thing that's about to happen. And I give Woolrich credit for keeping all the deaths practically offscreen without everyone walking in on the aftermath . . . almost everyone dies in a peacefully violent fashion and its somehow more gruesome without blood splattered everywhere. Prior to it Johnny acts a psychologically maestro, stringing everyone along until he can take it all away at the worst possible moment.
Its perhaps fitting in this world that the police are effectively useless . . . while Chandler had Marlowe to at least puzzle things out and set the parameters of how bad it could get, here the cops are mostly floundering around, denying there is a problem for the longest time and even when they start figuring it out always seemingly a step or two behind from the fiendishly clever and invincible Johnny, who is so singleminded he can't be stopped. The one detective we follow seems beaten down before the case even starts and his eventual revelations are trying to gather smoke, a delay of the inevitable. Knowing you're going to die doesn't change the fact that you're going to. By the time they vaguely understand what's going on they might as well be the victims of prophecy in some ancient Greek drama.
Each "rendezvous" is a little worse than the one before, culminating in the last, which is just awful. With the last victim finally convinced of the target and what's to come, they flee as best they can and Woolrich drags it out for the longest time, playing a sick game of push and pull as they get ahead, fall back, get ahead again and just when it finally feels like they might have succeeded he drops the hammer in what for me was the more stomach churning murder of them all, a blind woman's tracing of an escape where every door only takes her back inside her own abattoir. Woolrich's prose isn't often pretty, too often its pulpishly blunt or riding the wrong edge of hysterics but there are moments where all those unpretty edges lock together and achieve a horrible chiseled beauty. It may not be a gift everyone wants, but its definitely a gift here.
What I find fascinating about this book is how perfunctory it feels, with every bit of possible fat trimmed away until only toughness is left, and how weary it feels as well. At times it feels like everyone is dead before the book even starts, or that they've all done this before and are condemned to keep repeating and even as they know in the backs of their heads how its going to go they have no choice but to play their parts. Even the ending isn't as much a relief as just one more thing to be checked off the list (and anyone who has watched 1940s noir films will find the finale style here familiar . . . a thundering hail of bullets, a pithy remark and roll credits!) . . . with all the worst already done its not even a measure of balance but merely a way to feel that the universe still has some sliver of justice woven into its fraying fibers.
I don't know if this is Woolrich's best book or if everything else is more of the same (I have a couple more coming up so I guess I'll find out) but there's a laserlike directness to this that can easily get ahold of you if you're so inclined toward this style of writing. It feels like the kind of work that other writers parody, or try to seriously mimic but there's something utterly lived-in about this that makes it stand out for me above any followers or satirists, the kind of book that you pull out of a very dark place, not because you're trying to find a way to the light but more like a tiny message in a bottle shot up to give anyone who finds it a glimpse of what it might be like down there. It’s the kind of world that's okay to visit, but you definitely don't want to live there, which gives you something in common with the people in the book because they don't want to live there either. But they don't have a choice and seem to know it and hate it every single minute. The randomness of our world is scary at times (okay, all the time) but in Woolrich's world every act has deadly consequences and those consequences lead to further acts and it never ends because whatever diseased engine powers that world doesn't know how to stop and doesn't want to stop. There's no nice days, only preludes and once you catch the feel of it on the wind there's no relaxing, ever. Two hundred brisk pages feels like an eternity in its own way once you understand there's no living, just existing. And if Woolrich made a place where even the oxygen you breathe is coated in sandpaper there are times when it seems like not only did he drop his suitcases down and decided "I'm home" but held his breath so as to force himself to gasp and drive the pain in deeper.
June 19, 2021
This is your basic revenge tale. But it is an odd one that tips this book almost into the horror genre. The victims of the revenge are innocent and likable.
This was a very imaginatively written, highly suspenseful book. Cliche it may be for me to say so, but once I reached the halfway point I literally could not stop reading. The only reason the book doesn't get five stars from me is because the events depicted are just too improbable. The antagonist is all-knowing and far too formidable.
Still, I highly recommend this book for suspense thriller fans. They will more than get there money's worth. If you are looking for a fresh approach to writing and a strange and in many ways disturbing book, I think this fits the bill. I've never read anything like this novel anywhere else.
This was a very imaginatively written, highly suspenseful book. Cliche it may be for me to say so, but once I reached the halfway point I literally could not stop reading. The only reason the book doesn't get five stars from me is because the events depicted are just too improbable. The antagonist is all-knowing and far too formidable.
Still, I highly recommend this book for suspense thriller fans. They will more than get there money's worth. If you are looking for a fresh approach to writing and a strange and in many ways disturbing book, I think this fits the bill. I've never read anything like this novel anywhere else.
January 20, 2012
The structure of Rendezvous in Black was intriguing in that the character first presented to the reader as the protagonist, disappears into the ether after the introductory chapters, only to emerge later as the homicidal specter that haunts a series of interconnected short stories. They’re not separate stories per se, but feel self-contained even though linked by common strands. Each story, or rendezvous, details a new cycle of revenge, and with each one I found my sympathies bouncing back and forth between the heartbroken and highly delusional killer, Johnny Marr (no relation to the Smiths guitarist!), and his innocent victims. Realistically, Marr is too all knowing and pulls off his complicated schemes too perfectly to be believable, but it does give him an almost supernatural quality. I burned through it in two days. Every few pages, it had me wanting to know what was going to happen next.
Most morbid sentence in the book:
He had, for the past several moments, been whipping a corpse.
Most morbid sentence in the book:
He had, for the past several moments, been whipping a corpse.
January 14, 2020
Dark, but strangely compelling book. You'll automatically use some suspension of disbelief as you turn the pages perhaps wondering why you can't stop reading this when you actually want to.
I'd say Woolrich is a spellbinding story teller who has turned a mediocre story into a goodread.
I'd say Woolrich is a spellbinding story teller who has turned a mediocre story into a goodread.
May 26, 2020
This is a dark book, no pun intended, and perhaps too much for some readers who want a more sanitized murder/detective story. This book describes in mild detail how a maddened killer goes about his work, but leaves out the worst details; this isn’t Agatha Christie and the location isn’t quaint St Mary Mead – and I very much enjoy Christie, too!! It is even more direct in description of the crimes than the classic “noir” writers, but not really as bad as it could be. As a forensic anthropologist I worked on much worse and ghastly cases than these.
Let me explain a bit of the story. A bottle is thrown out of a plane by a wealthy drunk jerk on his way to a sporting weekend – hunting or fishing. It is 1941 so you could throw a bottle out of a rickety small charter plane then. The bottle lands on a young woman waiting for her beau and brutally kills her. The beau is beyond heartbroken – he is mad with grief, and the foolish act must be avenged. He works for several months to discover which plane it was and who was in the plane, then plots to deliver similar justice to the plane occupants. By “similar justice,” that is, kill not the guilty party himself, but the woman he loves most, just as he lost his great love. And so he proceeds. The “most loved woman” varies in each case, but the killer seems to choose the right one, the most loved. At first, are these accidents? Acts of God? Murder? All the revenges take place on the anniversary of the initial death – 31 May. A single detective is able to link the disparate cases together to form a pattern and attempt to foil the killer before more carnage ensues.
It is well-written and an easy, if queasy, read. It is also one of a “Black” series written by Woolrich; in this book the killer is a man, but in an earlier book in the series the avenging angel is a woman. I liked the hardness of the writing and directness of the plot. There are several errors, the worst of which is that when crossing the International Date Line in the Pacific going West, the day is the next day, not a repeat of the previous date. Just like a Thomas Hardy book, don’t read this in the Winter when it is dark and dreary outside because the book is dark and dreary inside.
Let me explain a bit of the story. A bottle is thrown out of a plane by a wealthy drunk jerk on his way to a sporting weekend – hunting or fishing. It is 1941 so you could throw a bottle out of a rickety small charter plane then. The bottle lands on a young woman waiting for her beau and brutally kills her. The beau is beyond heartbroken – he is mad with grief, and the foolish act must be avenged. He works for several months to discover which plane it was and who was in the plane, then plots to deliver similar justice to the plane occupants. By “similar justice,” that is, kill not the guilty party himself, but the woman he loves most, just as he lost his great love. And so he proceeds. The “most loved woman” varies in each case, but the killer seems to choose the right one, the most loved. At first, are these accidents? Acts of God? Murder? All the revenges take place on the anniversary of the initial death – 31 May. A single detective is able to link the disparate cases together to form a pattern and attempt to foil the killer before more carnage ensues.
It is well-written and an easy, if queasy, read. It is also one of a “Black” series written by Woolrich; in this book the killer is a man, but in an earlier book in the series the avenging angel is a woman. I liked the hardness of the writing and directness of the plot. There are several errors, the worst of which is that when crossing the International Date Line in the Pacific going West, the day is the next day, not a repeat of the previous date. Just like a Thomas Hardy book, don’t read this in the Winter when it is dark and dreary outside because the book is dark and dreary inside.
August 4, 2022
Một câu chuyện đen trong nghĩa bế tắc, không có lối thoát, không cứu được bất kỳ ai đã vào danh sách nạn nhân phải chết. “Đen” trong nghĩa nhân-quả tuyệt đối, thậm chí cực đoan. Độc giả không cần phải đoán hung thủ vì đã quá rõ ràng, nhưng vẫn bị diễn biến và sự đau thương dẫn dắt theo tuyến truyện cho đến cuối.
Như suy nghĩ của cảnh sát Cameron, rằng: Tại sao một mối tình đẹp đẽ lại trở thành như vậy? Tại sao hai con người hiền lành bỗng có số phận thê thảm và ngắn ngủi như vậy? Mọi thứ bắt đầu từ đâu? Một chi tiết nhỏ vô ý của bất kỳ ai đều có thể tạo ra một chuỗi nạn nhân, và từ đó là những oán hận và trả thù.
Truyện của Cornell Woolrich luôn nghiêng về phần tâm lý tội phạm và những nguyên nhân làm biến chất một người, với những miêu tả khá là văn so với mảng trinh thám thường khô hoặc đầy hành động. Đọc và cảm nhận được cảm xúc sâu kín của hung thủ lẫn nạn nhân, là điều mà những tác phẩm của nhà văn này đem lại được cho độc giả.
Như suy nghĩ của cảnh sát Cameron, rằng: Tại sao một mối tình đẹp đẽ lại trở thành như vậy? Tại sao hai con người hiền lành bỗng có số phận thê thảm và ngắn ngủi như vậy? Mọi thứ bắt đầu từ đâu? Một chi tiết nhỏ vô ý của bất kỳ ai đều có thể tạo ra một chuỗi nạn nhân, và từ đó là những oán hận và trả thù.
Truyện của Cornell Woolrich luôn nghiêng về phần tâm lý tội phạm và những nguyên nhân làm biến chất một người, với những miêu tả khá là văn so với mảng trinh thám thường khô hoặc đầy hành động. Đọc và cảm nhận được cảm xúc sâu kín của hung thủ lẫn nạn nhân, là điều mà những tác phẩm của nhà văn này đem lại được cho độc giả.
November 27, 2021
A dark book about a young man who loses the love of his life shortly before marriage, and engages on a mission of vengeance against the men responsible. Each revenge portion is different, and while awful and grim still carries a sense of righteous fury misdirected into hate.
The way the girl dies is not clear, possibly a hit-and-run, and how the young man manages to find out the information he uses isn't exactly clear either. There are some weak points, such as the way this plain and forgettable man seems to be absolute catnip to women when he needs to be, but overall the book is extremely well written, vivid, and powerful.
The way the girl dies is not clear, possibly a hit-and-run, and how the young man manages to find out the information he uses isn't exactly clear either. There are some weak points, such as the way this plain and forgettable man seems to be absolute catnip to women when he needs to be, but overall the book is extremely well written, vivid, and powerful.
April 23, 2019
Da un drammatico incidente, nella mente di un innamorato sconvolto scatta un desiderio di vendetta che porterà ad una serie di eventi tragici. Bello. Mi è piaciuto molto.
July 16, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 83
This is the last of the author's "Black" series and I hope to go back at some point and read them all.
HOOK=3 stars: "They had a date every night" is the opening line. The 'every night' sounds ominous to readers that have entered Cornell's state-of-noir-mind previously and yes, on page one a reader can see something is not right. Still, an average opener, for 3 stars.
PACE=2: It takes 10 or so pages for anything to happen. Then, Cornell takes off but just a tad late for this genre.
PLOT=4: That couple dating every night? Yes, very ominous as in ten pages Dorothy is dead and Johnny's universe has flipped. The plot feels a bit uneven at times but may be intentional as 'reason 1'- Johnny is a mess. (but 'reason 2', so is the author, an alcoholic enduring "self-contempt" according to Francis Nevins in an introduction to this novel.) The plot builds to a very good climax. All is seemingly resolved, but about 1/4th of the book appears to be ahead of us. So, 'reason 3'- an even better climax occurs. And there is still more pages ahead! Can anything be left to explain? Yes, and there is 'reason 4', a sensational, breathtaking third climax. Uneven? Is it Cornell's alcoholic binges at the helm, dictating a day of typing, a day of a hangover, etc. Or is it Cornell's brilliance, setting the triple-climax up, chapter by chapter? I've read a number of this author's books, and Cornell is one of the best noir authors I've read. So, from Cornell's life comes this specific construction. It's different, and very good.
CHARACTERS=4: First, the author's voice. Cornell led a life of misery, spending most of it in the clutches of his mom. The author, gay, had married a member of the opposite sex (it's 1948, after all) but she left him inside a month or so after the marriage and Cornell returns to mother, again these comments about the author are from Nevins' introduction. I could here Cornell's confusion through Johnny's mess of a life: to say each had uneven lives is a bit of an understatement. In the story, Dorothy's death feels symbolic of Cornell's spouse taking leave. Johnny himself is enthralling and a character you can't forget once you close the book.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE=4: A small city, a street corner, a cruise and more, all done simply, on the ordinary side. But the author takes us into a beautifully done claustrophobic cabin on a cruise ship for a novel set-centerpiece, and it's a beauty in emotion and intensity.
SUMMARY: My overall rating is 3.4. The extended climax scenes are the highlight and if it hadn't been for the ordinary first page and a rather ordinary pace for most of the book, I'd give a higher rating to this book. I've read better books by this author, and at least one more is to appear as we head to Number 1.
BOOK 83
This is the last of the author's "Black" series and I hope to go back at some point and read them all.
HOOK=3 stars: "They had a date every night" is the opening line. The 'every night' sounds ominous to readers that have entered Cornell's state-of-noir-mind previously and yes, on page one a reader can see something is not right. Still, an average opener, for 3 stars.
PACE=2: It takes 10 or so pages for anything to happen. Then, Cornell takes off but just a tad late for this genre.
PLOT=4: That couple dating every night? Yes, very ominous as in ten pages Dorothy is dead and Johnny's universe has flipped. The plot feels a bit uneven at times but may be intentional as 'reason 1'- Johnny is a mess. (but 'reason 2', so is the author, an alcoholic enduring "self-contempt" according to Francis Nevins in an introduction to this novel.) The plot builds to a very good climax. All is seemingly resolved, but about 1/4th of the book appears to be ahead of us. So, 'reason 3'- an even better climax occurs. And there is still more pages ahead! Can anything be left to explain? Yes, and there is 'reason 4', a sensational, breathtaking third climax. Uneven? Is it Cornell's alcoholic binges at the helm, dictating a day of typing, a day of a hangover, etc. Or is it Cornell's brilliance, setting the triple-climax up, chapter by chapter? I've read a number of this author's books, and Cornell is one of the best noir authors I've read. So, from Cornell's life comes this specific construction. It's different, and very good.
CHARACTERS=4: First, the author's voice. Cornell led a life of misery, spending most of it in the clutches of his mom. The author, gay, had married a member of the opposite sex (it's 1948, after all) but she left him inside a month or so after the marriage and Cornell returns to mother, again these comments about the author are from Nevins' introduction. I could here Cornell's confusion through Johnny's mess of a life: to say each had uneven lives is a bit of an understatement. In the story, Dorothy's death feels symbolic of Cornell's spouse taking leave. Johnny himself is enthralling and a character you can't forget once you close the book.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE=4: A small city, a street corner, a cruise and more, all done simply, on the ordinary side. But the author takes us into a beautifully done claustrophobic cabin on a cruise ship for a novel set-centerpiece, and it's a beauty in emotion and intensity.
SUMMARY: My overall rating is 3.4. The extended climax scenes are the highlight and if it hadn't been for the ordinary first page and a rather ordinary pace for most of the book, I'd give a higher rating to this book. I've read better books by this author, and at least one more is to appear as we head to Number 1.
July 17, 2017
I liked this novel a lot more than the first Woolrich novel I read four years ago; “I Married a Dead Man.” I’m glad I gave his work another try, this one kept me hooked the whole time.
I think Woolrich’s writing is something you need to be in the mood for. It’s kinda pulpy, but it’s more of a slow burn, dark, depressive noir feel. This book was more fast-paced than “I Married a Dead Man” but it still has that gloomy pall over it.
This book has such a wild concept at base, a young man takes revenge on some men who drop a liquor bottle out of a charter flight onto his girlfriend’s head? It’s a crazy, convoluted concept, but it makes for an interesting plotline, partly because we never really expect anyone to properly connect the dots, we can only watch in horror as the opening character becomes a vengeful shadow in the background.
I wouldn't call this a great novel, but it’s an undeniably fun read, well, fun if you like hopelessly depressing noir novels that is.
I think Woolrich’s writing is something you need to be in the mood for. It’s kinda pulpy, but it’s more of a slow burn, dark, depressive noir feel. This book was more fast-paced than “I Married a Dead Man” but it still has that gloomy pall over it.
This book has such a wild concept at base, a young man takes revenge on some men who drop a liquor bottle out of a charter flight onto his girlfriend’s head? It’s a crazy, convoluted concept, but it makes for an interesting plotline, partly because we never really expect anyone to properly connect the dots, we can only watch in horror as the opening character becomes a vengeful shadow in the background.
I wouldn't call this a great novel, but it’s an undeniably fun read, well, fun if you like hopelessly depressing noir novels that is.
May 18, 2010
This is the first book I've read by Cornell Woolrich, it came out in 1948. At first his tone struck me as almost modest but what unfolds are revealing insights and the inescapable presense of passion, hate, death, longing, and avenging desperate violence, and pretty soon my impression of his writing tone was altered. He's no wimp afraid of writing a brutal scene and enchanting plot. It rollercoasts with great power and has a great deal of engaging humor especially when dealing with loosers, cops and criminals and snappy noir type descriptions a'la Chandler. Of course I'm going to read more of Woolrich's work!
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