Book Chase

>Boston Noir is, by my count, the thirty-fourth book in a series of darkish short story collections set in major cities around the world. Each of the featured cities has distinct enough a personality to set a unique tone for its particular volume, even, at times becoming as much a character in the stories as the chief protagonists themselves.

This particular volume is home to eleven short stories, some of which have been written by authors already well known to genre readers and others by lesser known writers. Dennis Lehane contributes both the book’s introduction and a story entitled “Animal Rescue” about a seemingly simple man with an unexpected hard edge to him. Other contributors include: Stewart O’Nan, Lynne Heitman, Jim Fusilli, Patricia Powell and John Dufresne.

The stories have a tough, sometimes depressing, tone to them but they are kept lighter than they otherwise would have been by the bits of ironic humor that sneak into them when least expected. Even readers unfamiliar with the term “noir,” will be tempted to explore the collection after reading Lehane’s definition of what it takes to be a “noir hero” –

“In Shakespeare, tragic heroes fall from mountaintops; in noir, they fall from curbs. Tragic heroes die in a blaze of their own ill-advised conflation. Noir heroes die clutching fences or crumpled in trunks or, in the case of poor Eddie Coyle, they simply doze off drunkenly in a car and take one in the back of the head before they have a chance to wake up again. No wise words, no music swelling on the soundtrack.”

These are stories about white collar people who finally reach their breaking point; people who see an opportunity to stick it to the system and grab the chance to do so; people eager to profit from the deaths of others; hard people that suffer because of soft hearts; inept criminals who somehow manage to bluff their way through; and the worst kind of sex predator – something for everyone.

Stories collected from so many different writers will, of course, vary in quality, and those gathered in Boston Noir are no exception to that rule. What is rather unusual, unfortunately, is that the quality of these stories range all the way from very effective to almost incomprehensible, meaning that most readers are likely to consider Boston Noir to be, at best, an average collection of short stories.

Rated at: 3.0

Being almost completely unfamiliar with the old Nick and Nora Charles movies, I came to The Thin Man with no preconceived notions about its two main characters and how they might fit into the rest of Hammett’s body of work. At first, the book did not strike me as being particularly dark or hardboiled, two qualities I have come to expect from Hammett’s writing, but by the time I finished it I had changed my mind. As Hammett developed his storyline and fleshed out his characters it became apparent that the more sophisticated Nick and Nora were dealing with characters from the criminal underworld and the NYPD who would have fit comfortably into any Hammett novel.

Ex-detective Nick Charles and his wealthy young wife have come from San Francisco to spend Christmas 1932 in New York City, a city with which Nick is very familiar and in which he still has many friends and contacts because of the years he worked it as a private detective. Nick, retired from the business and hoping to earn his keep these days by managing the enormous wealth that his new wife has inherited, wants nothing more from the holiday than a chance to visit old haunts, see a few friends, drink some good booze on a regular basis and sleep until noon each day.

A chance encounter with the daughter of a former client of his who wants him to help her find her father makes sure that most of Nick’s original holiday goals will be impossible to achieve because, try as he might to avoid any involvement, he is slowly sucked into a mess beyond his imagination. Before he knows what hit him, Nick is working with a NYPD detective on a murder investigation, becomes the target of one of the murder suspects, finds that the wife of another suspect is trying to frame him for the murder, realizes that he and Nora have become surrogate parents to the young lady who first got him involved, and is still trying to squeeze in as much booze as possible into his daily routine.

The Thin Man was Dashiell Hammett’s last novel and I had hoped to enjoy it much more than I did. Strangely enough, what will stay with me the longest is the alcoholism that the novel’s main character, Nick Charles, so obviously suffers, suffers to such a degree that he is constantly joking about his need for a drink and offering drinks to others so that he will have an excuse to mix one for himself. In fact, his young wife Nora, if she stays with Nick too many years, is almost certainly going to end up in the same boat. Hammett, an alcoholic himself, portrays these drinking habits as humorous and sophisticated, very much a positive thing in the lives of Nick and Nora Charles. I found that attitude, along with some casual use of the “N-word” to be distracting enough to keep me from fully buying into the novel’s plot. I realize that the book was written at least 75 years ago but I struggled to get past this kind of thing, especially Hammett’s attempt to make alcoholism seem so appealing a lifestyle.

I listened to the audio version of the book and I was impressed with the way that William Dufris read the novel. The Thin Man is largely a first person narrative by Nick Charles with the remainder of the book being told in conversational format. Dufris does a superb job providing accents, inflections and different voices for the various characters, male and female, and made listening to Hammett’s story a pleasure but, overall, I was disappointed in the book. Based on its reputation, I think that I expected too much.

Rated at: 3.0

Being almost completely unfamiliar with the old Nick and Nora Charles movies, I came to The Thin Man with no preconceived notions about its two main characters and how they might fit into the rest of Hammett’s body of work. At first, the book did not strike me as being particularly dark or hardboiled, two qualities I have come to expect from Hammett’s writing, but by the time I finished it I had changed my mind. As Hammett developed his storyline and fleshed out his characters it became apparent that the more sophisticated Nick and Nora were dealing with characters from the criminal underworld and the NYPD who would have fit comfortably into any Hammett novel.

Ex-detective Nick Charles and his wealthy young wife have come from San Francisco to spend Christmas 1932 in New York City, a city with which Nick is very familiar and in which he still has many friends and contacts because of the years he worked it as a private detective. Nick, retired from the business and hoping to earn his keep these days by managing the enormous wealth that his new wife has inherited, wants nothing more from the holiday than a chance to visit old haunts, see a few friends, drink some good booze on a regular basis and sleep until noon each day.

A chance encounter with the daughter of a former client of his who wants him to help her find her father makes sure that most of Nick’s original holiday goals will be impossible to achieve because, try as he might to avoid any involvement, he is slowly sucked into a mess beyond his imagination. Before he knows what hit him, Nick is working with a NYPD detective on a murder investigation, becomes the target of one of the murder suspects, finds that the wife of another suspect is trying to frame him for the murder, realizes that he and Nora have become surrogate parents to the young lady who first got him involved, and is still trying to squeeze in as much booze as possible into his daily routine.

The Thin Man was Dashiell Hammett’s last novel and I had hoped to enjoy it much more than I did. Strangely enough, what will stay with me the longest is the alcoholism that the novel’s main character, Nick Charles, so obviously suffers, suffers to such a degree that he is constantly joking about his need for a drink and offering drinks to others so that he will have an excuse to mix one for himself. In fact, his young wife Nora, if she stays with Nick too many years, is almost certainly going to end up in the same boat. Hammett, an alcoholic himself, portrays these drinking habits as humorous and sophisticated, very much a positive thing in the lives of Nick and Nora Charles. I found that attitude, along with some casual use of the “N-word” to be distracting enough to keep me from fully buying into the novel’s plot. I realize that the book was written at least 75 years ago but I struggled to get past this kind of thing, especially Hammett’s attempt to make alcoholism seem so appealing a lifestyle.

I listened to the audio version of the book and I was impressed with the way that William Dufris read the novel. The Thin Man is largely a first person narrative by Nick Charles with the remainder of the book being told in conversational format. Dufris does a superb job providing accents, inflections and different voices for the various characters, male and female, and made listening to Hammett’s story a pleasure but, overall, I was disappointed in the book. Based on its reputation, I think that I expected too much.

Rated at: 3.0

>Being almost completely unfamiliar with the old Nick and Nora Charles movies, I came to The Thin Man with no preconceived notions about its two main characters and how they might fit into the rest of Hammett’s body of work. At first, the book did not strike me as being particularly dark or hardboiled, two qualities I have come to expect from Hammett’s writing, but by the time I finished it I had changed my mind. As Hammett developed his storyline and fleshed out his characters it became apparent that the more sophisticated Nick and Nora were dealing with characters from the criminal underworld and the NYPD who would have fit comfortably into any Hammett novel.

Ex-detective Nick Charles and his wealthy young wife have come from San Francisco to spend Christmas 1932 in New York City, a city with which Nick is very familiar and in which he still has many friends and contacts because of the years he worked it as a private detective. Nick, retired from the business and hoping to earn his keep these days by managing the enormous wealth that his new wife has inherited, wants nothing more from the holiday than a chance to visit old haunts, see a few friends, drink some good booze on a regular basis and sleep until noon each day.

A chance encounter with the daughter of a former client of his who wants him to help her find her father makes sure that most of Nick’s original holiday goals will be impossible to achieve because, try as he might to avoid any involvement, he is slowly sucked into a mess beyond his imagination. Before he knows what hit him, Nick is working with a NYPD detective on a murder investigation, becomes the target of one of the murder suspects, finds that the wife of another suspect is trying to frame him for the murder, realizes that he and Nora have become surrogate parents to the young lady who first got him involved, and is still trying to squeeze in as much booze as possible into his daily routine.

The Thin Man was Dashiell Hammett’s last novel and I had hoped to enjoy it much more than I did. Strangely enough, what will stay with me the longest is the alcoholism that the novel’s main character, Nick Charles, so obviously suffers, suffers to such a degree that he is constantly joking about his need for a drink and offering drinks to others so that he will have an excuse to mix one for himself. In fact, his young wife Nora, if she stays with Nick too many years, is almost certainly going to end up in the same boat. Hammett, an alcoholic himself, portrays these drinking habits as humorous and sophisticated, very much a positive thing in the lives of Nick and Nora Charles. I found that attitude, along with some casual use of the “N-word” to be distracting enough to keep me from fully buying into the novel’s plot. I realize that the book was written at least 75 years ago but I struggled to get past this kind of thing, especially Hammett’s attempt to make alcoholism seem so appealing a lifestyle.

I listened to the audio version of the book and I was impressed with the way that William Dufris read the novel. The Thin Man is largely a first person narrative by Nick Charles with the remainder of the book being told in conversational format. Dufris does a superb job providing accents, inflections and different voices for the various characters, male and female, and made listening to Hammett’s story a pleasure but, overall, I was disappointed in the book. Based on its reputation, I think that I expected too much.

Rated at: 3.0

The Big Clock is considered to be a classic representation of American Noir and, in many ways, I agree with that assessment. It has all of the elements that reflect that style of writing: a dark atmosphere, hardboiled narration, crime, suspense, obsessive passions, guilt ridden individuals caught up in circumstances beyond their control, etc. But this 1946 Kenneth Fearing novel fell flat for me and I can’t say that I much enjoyed it.

George Stroud, one of the novel’s several first-person narrators, works at a major publishing corporation and has a nice little life going for himself. His world includes a wife by the name of Georgette and a little girl called Georgia, a family that seems to genuinely enjoy calling each other by the name “George” in casual conversation. But all is not what it appears to be. George Stroud has cheated on his wife in the past and he makes little effort to change that habit, even going so far as to start an affair with the mistress of the founder of the company that employs him, one Earl Janoth.

Circumstances catch up with Stroud at the end of one weekend spent with this mistress of both men when, upon returning her to her apartment, he is glimpsed by Earl Janoth who has unexpectedly shown up at the apartment house. The brief encounter with Janoth becomes a threat to Stroud’s very life after Janoth, in a sudden fit of rage, strikes the young woman a death blow with the wine decanter from which they were drinking before he confronted her about the mystery man he had seen with her.

The novel takes a Hitchcockian twist when Stroud is called into Earl Janoth’s office and is placed in charge of a massive project to identify the mysterious man who might have the power to place Janoth at the murder scene. Stroud, of course, has to appear to be making the most of the company’s massive resources to find the man while, at the same time, trying to make sure that he is never identified as being that man himself.

Author Kenneth Fearing still had me up to this point. I enjoyed watching Stroud squirm as he tried so desperately to appear to be the hound rather than the rabbit. The suspense level continued to build nicely and I wondered if he was going to avoid the goons who wanted to kill him or if he was going to have to finally confront them directly. But the timing involved in Fearing’s solution is just so improbable that it ruined the novel for me and I wonder why the book is considered to be such a classic of its type. The book did translate well to film and has been made into two movies, The Big Clock starring Ray Milland and No Way Out, a Kevin Costner film.

Rated at: 2.5

The Big Clock is considered to be a classic representation of American Noir and, in many ways, I agree with that assessment. It has all of the elements that reflect that style of writing: a dark atmosphere, hardboiled narration, crime, suspense, obsessive passions, guilt ridden individuals caught up in circumstances beyond their control, etc. But this 1946 Kenneth Fearing novel fell flat for me and I can’t say that I much enjoyed it.

George Stroud, one of the novel’s several first-person narrators, works at a major publishing corporation and has a nice little life going for himself. His world includes a wife by the name of Georgette and a little girl called Georgia, a family that seems to genuinely enjoy calling each other by the name “George” in casual conversation. But all is not what it appears to be. George Stroud has cheated on his wife in the past and he makes little effort to change that habit, even going so far as to start an affair with the mistress of the founder of the company that employs him, one Earl Janoth.

Circumstances catch up with Stroud at the end of one weekend spent with this mistress of both men when, upon returning her to her apartment, he is glimpsed by Earl Janoth who has unexpectedly shown up at the apartment house. The brief encounter with Janoth becomes a threat to Stroud’s very life after Janoth, in a sudden fit of rage, strikes the young woman a death blow with the wine decanter from which they were drinking before he confronted her about the mystery man he had seen with her.

The novel takes a Hitchcockian twist when Stroud is called into Earl Janoth’s office and is placed in charge of a massive project to identify the mysterious man who might have the power to place Janoth at the murder scene. Stroud, of course, has to appear to be making the most of the company’s massive resources to find the man while, at the same time, trying to make sure that he is never identified as being that man himself.

Author Kenneth Fearing still had me up to this point. I enjoyed watching Stroud squirm as he tried so desperately to appear to be the hound rather than the rabbit. The suspense level continued to build nicely and I wondered if he was going to avoid the goons who wanted to kill him or if he was going to have to finally confront them directly. But the timing involved in Fearing’s solution is just so improbable that it ruined the novel for me and I wonder why the book is considered to be such a classic of its type. The book did translate well to film and has been made into two movies, The Big Clock starring Ray Milland and No Way Out, a Kevin Costner film.

Rated at: 2.5

>The Big Clock is considered to be a classic representation of American Noir and, in many ways, I agree with that assessment. It has all of the elements that reflect that style of writing: a dark atmosphere, hardboiled narration, crime, suspense, obsessive passions, guilt ridden individuals caught up in circumstances beyond their control, etc. But this 1946 Kenneth Fearing novel fell flat for me and I can’t say that I much enjoyed it.

George Stroud, one of the novel’s several first-person narrators, works at a major publishing corporation and has a nice little life going for himself. His world includes a wife by the name of Georgette and a little girl called Georgia, a family that seems to genuinely enjoy calling each other by the name “George” in casual conversation. But all is not what it appears to be. George Stroud has cheated on his wife in the past and he makes little effort to change that habit, even going so far as to start an affair with the mistress of the founder of the company that employs him, one Earl Janoth.

Circumstances catch up with Stroud at the end of one weekend spent with this mistress of both men when, upon returning her to her apartment, he is glimpsed by Earl Janoth who has unexpectedly shown up at the apartment house. The brief encounter with Janoth becomes a threat to Stroud’s very life after Janoth, in a sudden fit of rage, strikes the young woman a death blow with the wine decanter from which they were drinking before he confronted her about the mystery man he had seen with her.

The novel takes a Hitchcockian twist when Stroud is called into Earl Janoth’s office and is placed in charge of a massive project to identify the mysterious man who might have the power to place Janoth at the murder scene. Stroud, of course, has to appear to be making the most of the company’s massive resources to find the man while, at the same time, trying to make sure that he is never identified as being that man himself.

Author Kenneth Fearing still had me up to this point. I enjoyed watching Stroud squirm as he tried so desperately to appear to be the hound rather than the rabbit. The suspense level continued to build nicely and I wondered if he was going to avoid the goons who wanted to kill him or if he was going to have to finally confront them directly. But the timing involved in Fearing’s solution is just so improbable that it ruined the novel for me and I wonder why the book is considered to be such a classic of its type. The book did translate well to film and has been made into two movies, The Big Clock starring Ray Milland and No Way Out, a Kevin Costner film.

Rated at: 2.5

The first version of I Married a Dead Man appeared as a novella in the April 1946 issue of Today’s Woman. By 1948, when the book was published under the pseudonym William Irish, Cornell Woolrich had expanded his novella and completely rewritten its ending, resulting in a fine American Noir novel that has been filmed at least three times. The best known movie version of I Married a Dead Man is the 1950 film starring Barbara Stanwyck for which the title was changed to No Man of Her Own. The movie is an excellent representation of the film noir of the period although it was somewhat weakened by the studio’s decision to use the original ending of the novella rather than the stronger, more compelling, ending of the novel itself.

Helen, a very young woman, finds herself seven months pregnant and abandoned by the father of her child. All that the father of her child has left her is a five dollar bill and train tickets from New York to the West Coast where she hopes to start a new life for herself and her baby. By the time that she is seen struggling to find a place for herself and her one suitcase on an overcrowded train, Helen is down to her last seventeen cents and is near despair. But fate has a surprise in store for Helen and the young couple who befriend her on the train, a surprise that offers Helen the chance to provide her child with the kind of life she never dreamed possible.

Does she have the nerve required to snatch that chance when she recognizes it? Is her love for her new baby so strong that she will do anything to ensure the child’s future? By the time that Helen has to answer those questions for herself, she finds that circumstances completely beyond her control have made it possible for her to live a life she never dreamed possible if only she keeps her mouth shut. But of course, fate is not that kind, nor is life that simple. That’s the rest of the story, a story that would have made Alfred Hitchcock smile, and one that I’m not going to spoil for you.

Cornell Woolrich deserves to be better known than he is today. He was a contemporary of Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Raymond Chandler, all of whom have remained largely in print for the last 60 or 70 years. But despite the fact that during the period between 1940 and 1948 alone, Woolrich produced six novels under his own name, four as William Irish and one using the name George Hopley, his work is not easily found today. Woolrich has been called “the Hitchcock of the written word” and, in fact, between 1938 and 1950 Hollywood producers turned some 15 of his stories into movies, the most famous of which is Hitchcock’s own Rear Window, a film based on the 1942 Woolrich novella It Had to Be Murder.

So if you are a fan of Cain, Hammett and Chandler but have read all of their work, Cornell Woolrich is a name you need to remember. Finding his work will require some extra effort, but Woolrich is a worthy addition to anyone’s American Noir collection.

The first version of I Married a Dead Man appeared as a novella in the April 1946 issue of Today’s Woman. By 1948, when the book was published under the pseudonym William Irish, Cornell Woolrich had expanded his novella and completely rewritten its ending, resulting in a fine American Noir novel that has been filmed at least three times. The best known movie version of I Married a Dead Man is the 1950 film starring Barbara Stanwyck for which the title was changed to No Man of Her Own. The movie is an excellent representation of the film noir of the period although it was somewhat weakened by the studio’s decision to use the original ending of the novella rather than the stronger, more compelling, ending of the novel itself.

Helen, a very young woman, finds herself seven months pregnant and abandoned by the father of her child. All that the father of her child has left her is a five dollar bill and train tickets from New York to the West Coast where she hopes to start a new life for herself and her baby. By the time that she is seen struggling to find a place for herself and her one suitcase on an overcrowded train, Helen is down to her last seventeen cents and is near despair. But fate has a surprise in store for Helen and the young couple who befriend her on the train, a surprise that offers Helen the chance to provide her child with the kind of life she never dreamed possible.

Does she have the nerve required to snatch that chance when she recognizes it? Is her love for her new baby so strong that she will do anything to ensure the child’s future? By the time that Helen has to answer those questions for herself, she finds that circumstances completely beyond her control have made it possible for her to live a life she never dreamed possible if only she keeps her mouth shut. But of course, fate is not that kind, nor is life that simple. That’s the rest of the story, a story that would have made Alfred Hitchcock smile, and one that I’m not going to spoil for you.

Cornell Woolrich deserves to be better known than he is today. He was a contemporary of Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Raymond Chandler, all of whom have remained largely in print for the last 60 or 70 years. But despite the fact that during the period between 1940 and 1948 alone, Woolrich produced six novels under his own name, four as William Irish and one using the name George Hopley, his work is not easily found today. Woolrich has been called “the Hitchcock of the written word” and, in fact, between 1938 and 1950 Hollywood producers turned some 15 of his stories into movies, the most famous of which is Hitchcock’s own Rear Window, a film based on the 1942 Woolrich novella It Had to Be Murder.

So if you are a fan of Cain, Hammett and Chandler but have read all of their work, Cornell Woolrich is a name you need to remember. Finding his work will require some extra effort, but Woolrich is a worthy addition to anyone’s American Noir collection.

>The first version of I Married a Dead Man appeared as a novella in the April 1946 issue of Today’s Woman. By 1948, when the book was published under the pseudonym William Irish, Cornell Woolrich had expanded his novella and completely rewritten its ending, resulting in a fine American Noir novel that has been filmed at least three times. The best known movie version of I Married a Dead Man is the 1950 film starring Barbara Stanwyck for which the title was changed to No Man of Her Own. The movie is an excellent representation of the film noir of the period although it was somewhat weakened by the studio’s decision to use the original ending of the novella rather than the stronger, more compelling, ending of the novel itself.

Helen, a very young woman, finds herself seven months pregnant and abandoned by the father of her child. All that the father of her child has left her is a five dollar bill and train tickets from New York to the West Coast where she hopes to start a new life for herself and her baby. By the time that she is seen struggling to find a place for herself and her one suitcase on an overcrowded train, Helen is down to her last seventeen cents and is near despair. But fate has a surprise in store for Helen and the young couple who befriend her on the train, a surprise that offers Helen the chance to provide her child with the kind of life she never dreamed possible.

Does she have the nerve required to snatch that chance when she recognizes it? Is her love for her new baby so strong that she will do anything to ensure the child’s future? By the time that Helen has to answer those questions for herself, she finds that circumstances completely beyond her control have made it possible for her to live a life she never dreamed possible if only she keeps her mouth shut. But of course, fate is not that kind, nor is life that simple. That’s the rest of the story, a story that would have made Alfred Hitchcock smile, and one that I’m not going to spoil for you.

Cornell Woolrich deserves to be better known than he is today. He was a contemporary of Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Raymond Chandler, all of whom have remained largely in print for the last 60 or 70 years. But despite the fact that during the period between 1940 and 1948 alone, Woolrich produced six novels under his own name, four as William Irish and one using the name George Hopley, his work is not easily found today. Woolrich has been called “the Hitchcock of the written word” and, in fact, between 1938 and 1950 Hollywood producers turned some 15 of his stories into movies, the most famous of which is Hitchcock’s own Rear Window, a film based on the 1942 Woolrich novella It Had to Be Murder.

So if you are a fan of Cain, Hammett and Chandler but have read all of their work, Cornell Woolrich is a name you need to remember. Finding his work will require some extra effort, but Woolrich is a worthy addition to anyone’s American Noir collection.

I’ve long had an interest in the American Noir of the 1930s-1950s period and was particularly happy to find that The Library of America considers much of the work of that period worthy of being added to its list. In fact, I know of six volumes published so far: two collections of Raymond Chandler’s work, two volumes from Dashiell Hammett, and two volumes entitled “Crime Novels,” one covering the decades of the thirties and forties and another of work first published in the fifties.

In its own words, The Library of America publishes “America’s best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions.” I totally agree with that description and I’ve been collecting LOA books for a few years now, adding two or three a year to my shelves.

Today I’ve been reading Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man, a novel that is included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s. I plan to review the novel when I finish it because it is one of those “lost novels” that few people remember and that is a shame. But what I already find interesting is the great contrast between the quality of the volume from which I’m reading Woolrich’s book (classy, full cloth binding, acid free paper) with the way that it was marketed in its earlier life.

Take a look at this 1949 cover:

Several of Cornell Woolrich’s novels were published under the name of “William Irish,” so no big surprise there. What makes me chuckle is how misleading this rather outlandish cover is about the book’s plot, making it appear to be some kind of ghoulish horror novel when it is actually more akin to the kind of story that made Alfred Hitchcock famous. I wonder how many readers judged this book by its cover.

I’ve long had an interest in the American Noir of the 1930s-1950s period and was particularly happy to find that The Library of America considers much of the work of that period worthy of being added to its list. In fact, I know of six volumes published so far: two collections of Raymond Chandler’s work, two volumes from Dashiell Hammett, and two volumes entitled “Crime Novels,” one covering the decades of the thirties and forties and another of work first published in the fifties.

In its own words, The Library of America publishes “America’s best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions.” I totally agree with that description and I’ve been collecting LOA books for a few years now, adding two or three a year to my shelves.

Today I’ve been reading Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man, a novel that is included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s. I plan to review the novel when I finish it because it is one of those “lost novels” that few people remember and that is a shame. But what I already find interesting is the great contrast between the quality of the volume from which I’m reading Woolrich’s book (classy, full cloth binding, acid free paper) with the way that it was marketed in its earlier life.

Take a look at this 1949 cover:

Several of Cornell Woolrich’s novels were published under the name of “William Irish,” so no big surprise there. What makes me chuckle is how misleading this rather outlandish cover is about the book’s plot, making it appear to be some kind of ghoulish horror novel when it is actually more akin to the kind of story that made Alfred Hitchcock famous. I wonder how many readers judged this book by its cover.

>I’ve long had an interest in the American Noir of the 1930s-1950s period and was particularly happy to find that The Library of America considers much of the work of that period worthy of being added to its list. In fact, I know of six volumes published so far: two collections of Raymond Chandler’s work, two volumes from Dashiell Hammett, and two volumes entitled “Crime Novels,” one covering the decades of the thirties and forties and another of work first published in the fifties.

In its own words, The Library of America publishes “America’s best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions.” I totally agree with that description and I’ve been collecting LOA books for a few years now, adding two or three a year to my shelves.

Today I’ve been reading Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man, a novel that is included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s. I plan to review the novel when I finish it because it is one of those “lost novels” that few people remember and that is a shame. But what I already find interesting is the great contrast between the quality of the volume from which I’m reading Woolrich’s book (classy, full cloth binding, acid free paper) with the way that it was marketed in its earlier life.

Take a look at this 1949 cover:

Several of Cornell Woolrich’s novels were published under the name of “William Irish,” so no big surprise there. What makes me chuckle is how misleading this rather outlandish cover is about the book’s plot, making it appear to be some kind of ghoulish horror novel when it is actually more akin to the kind of story that made Alfred Hitchcock famous. I wonder how many readers judged this book by its cover.