Today, as I write this, is the birthday of Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968). He was primarily a mystery writer. His best known work is probably “Rear Window”, which became an Alfred Hitchock film starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. My favorite novel of his would have to be Phantom Lady. which was written under his pseudonym of William Irish.
In this one, a man has a row with his wife and goes down to the corner bar to cool off. While there, he gets inot a conversation with a woman he has never seen before. He tells her he has divver reservations and tickets for two to a show that he won’t get to use. She is sympathetic.
They end up going out. They have dinner, see the show, than go dancing for a bit. Before they leave the bar, they agree this is a one-time thing. Neither will try to contact the other after the night is over. To guarantee they won’t, they don’t even exchange names. At the end of the night, they part ways.
He goes home to find his wife has been murdered while he was out.
The man is the only suspect.
The woman can clear him.
Except she can’t.
Everywhere he went, people swear he was alone.
She’s the only one who can clear him. And he has no idea how to find her.
The title of the first chapter is “The One-Hundredth Day Before the Execution.” They count down from there.
Woolrich didn’t write much in the way of the fantastic, although much of his work has a sense of creeping horror. An excellent example of this is the first Woolrich book I ever read, and probably my second favorite, Night Has a thousand Eyes.
A rich old man is told by a fortune teller at a carnival that he will die by the jaws of a lion.
Then a lion escapes from the zoo or a circus. I don’t recall which.
The story revolves around the police detective who is assigned to protect him.
And the old man’s beautiful young daughter, of course.
They’re barricaded in the old man’s mansion, just the three of them.
And the tension builds.
And builds.
The ending has a nice twist.
That’s was the thing about Woolrich. Some of his plots are contrived, and he tended to rely on coincidence a bit too much. But when he was hitting on all cylinders like he was in these two books, he could deliver the suspense like nobody else.
I think the top three mystery writers of the middle Twentieth Century were Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich. Each has his strengths and his appeal. Woolrich never wrote a series character, and you never know if the hero will survive to the end of the book. This adds to the suspense.
Woolrich’s work, both novels and short stories, is available in inexpensive electronic editons. Check him out if you haven’t.
