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Rendezvous in Black

by Cornell Woolrich, Richard Dooling (Introduction)

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 418 ratings · 45 reviews

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 plan...more

211 pages

Published March 16th 2004 by Modern Library (first published 1948)

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Nov 27, 2011 Dan Schwent rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-and-mystery, hardcase-writers, 2010

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...more

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Sep 15, 2007 Antonius Block added it

Shelves: noir-fiction

On 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...more On 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.
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Mar 03, 2008 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: jackrecommends

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Cornell Woolrich’s quirky, elegant narrator places Rendezvous in Black in the top tier of noir detective fiction. Woolrich’s story has an interesting twist that makes it somewhat different from other murder mysteries. And he provides a handful of murders, a sympathetic - to some degree - murderer, and a determined investigator. But the articulate, engaging third-person omniscient narrator created by Woolrich sets this novel apart.
He begins – I say he randomly because the voice and tone of the n...more Cornell Woolrich’s quirky, elegant narrator places Rendezvous in Black in the top tier of noir detective fiction. Woolrich’s story has an interesting twist that makes it somewhat different from other murder mysteries. And he provides a handful of murders, a sympathetic - to some degree - murderer, and a determined investigator. But the articulate, engaging third-person omniscient narrator created by Woolrich sets this novel apart.
He begins – I say he randomly because the voice and tone of the narrator can often be described as female – with a six page description of the love of Johnny Marr for his Dorothy while he waits at their nightly meeting spot. Johnny’s devotion, as he waits and watches for her, overwhelms the narration, “eyes oblivious of everything else around him, whistling a snatch of tune at the stars. Tapping his foot lightly, not in impatience, but because his foot was singing love songs to the ground.” In six short pages Woolrich’s skillful narrator establishes an uncommon love, enough to plausibly carry a murderer through years of premeditated revenge, each on the anniversary of his Dorothy’s death.
Woolrich’s narrator knows the point of view of Rendezvous’ characters, male and female, and moves fluidly between them. With Sharon about to wake her husband Bucky, who must report to the army induction center, he offers a “now” repetition, “And now everything had been done and there was nothing left to do. Now the tough part came. Now the showdown. She took a good deep breath to see her through. Now the curtain was up. Now she was on the air.” And she wakes him. Our narrator steps back to observe the two, “They were standing turned towards one another, face to face, now. They didn’t seem to know what to say. There was too much to say, not too little. It stuck in your throat.” And in the army Bucky gets a letter from her, “He carried it off by himself, like something precious, to be guarded against the whole world, to be kept for himself and to himself alone…He curled up in his bunk with it. And that was the right word, curled.” Later when Sharon meets and falls for the killer, our narrator observes with beauty and clarity, “Their lips met in their first kiss. They clung together as if they had vertigo. The whole night somersaulted around them, stars and arclight and all.”
He uses repetition several times with powerful effect. A boy waits for his girl in the lobby of the Carlton hotel. Rendzvous’ narrator says we can tell when she arrives by “The way his paper instantly furled and was discarded gave that away. The way his hand went up and his hat went up. The way his already cheerful face beamed broadly. Before she had even finished cleared the revolving door and the glass between them was out of the way.” Or later with Allen and Martine, “He hoists a bottle of champagne. They kiss. He brings two glasses. They kiss. He twists the cork. They kiss. The cork pops. Foam trickles down the sleeve of his coat. They laugh. They kiss, and kiss again, and laugh, and kiss again.”
Sometimes the narrator steps away for a moment and speaks directly to the reader, “Human beings are funny. They are so cruel, they are so kind; they are so calloused, they are so tender.” Or when Bill Morrisey who confronts the killer shouts “If you say you’re not, you’re a liar” Woolrich’s narrator adds in an aside “The adjective he used to modify the noun was unprintable.” The narrator observes the girl set up as bait to catch the killer waiting at Johnny Marr’s old rendezvous spot. He describes the passersby not solely as the girl sees them, but with a more discerning eye. He tells the reader something about each one solely by the way they glance at the girl, many covetously or with envy, and “one passes by who tightens his arm over his companion’s hand and thinks ‘I’m satisfied; I wouldn’t change’” after which our narrator adds in parenthesis “(He’ll make a good husband).”
The narrator offers subtle humor, “The receptionist combined the perfect grooming of a mannequin and the icy manner of the headmistress at a girl’s finishing school. She had no doubt been hired for just those qualities, or she would not have displayed them so copiously.” And his account of Allen Ward’s breakfast, “His breakfast was there. His wife was there. His newspaper was there. The latter interested him more than the first, and the first interested him more than the second, but he was polite enough to conceal this, giving his attention to all three in equal amounts.”
He will slip into personification. Madeline Drew’s “demented, love-smitten little roadster came sluicing around the corner” and as she hurries to meet her lover, “I’m here my love, her heart murmured” and Madeline rushes to the stairs which “were nothing to her winged feet.” Feelings take a life of their own, as in “Hope had a miscarriage, and left a residue of pain gnawing at her vitals.”
Richard Dooling, in his introduction to the novel, relates that Woolrich’s first two novels in the 20s were literary ones that drew comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. After a hiatus which included a failed marriage he returned as a “writer of hardboiled crime fiction” and was noted for his “fingernail-gnawing suspense” (xi, xii). Rendezvous offers copious quantities of fingernail gnawing opportunities. Yet in addition to nails gnawed to the quick, Woolrich’s literary voice contains a consistent eloquence that escapes many other examples of the genre, placing it a hardboiled cut above.
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Mar 03, 2013 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-thriller, noir

Yes, this book feels dated (it was first published in 1948), and everything said about Woolrich being a clunky writer is true. But this is classic noir, and a compelling, ominous and twisted read from the first page. I'd never heard of Woolrich before reading a recent review of this reprint. However, either the book's introduction or review (I forget which) noted that during his heyday he apparently had more stories turned into films than any other noir author (including "Rear Window"), and in c...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

The epitome of noir in that it was a very dark story. The author's theme here is the randomness and inevitability of death within a world that offers little in the way of real justice. There also is a reflection of the concept of Original Sin -- that there are no true "good" people in the world and that all are capable of doing some wrong out of selfishness.

I found portions of the plot too reliant on coincidence and the antagonist far too able to seemingly do anything without fail. I also found...more

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Jan 20, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 f...more

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May 06, 2010 Korynn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-crime

Fantastic stuff. The book starts vaguely with the pedestrian activity of two people in love that is suddenly cut short by unexpected and inexplicable tragedy. This triggers a mania in the surviving man but we lose track of him to follow the stories of individuals whose lives are disturbed by the insertion of a man who makes himself familiar and sympathetic to them only to disappear with death in his wake. A persistent detective becomes our hero and slowly pieces together a tale of madness and wo...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Jeremy Good rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir, 2012-challenge-books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Cornell Woolrich is referred to as "greatest" in a couple of anthologies I've been examining. In Best American Noir of the Century, he is referred to as the greatest suspense writer. In Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, he is thrice represented and referred to as the greatest noir writer, period. "His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind only Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner." - wikipedia.

But he far exceeded these...more Cornell Woolrich is referred to as "greatest" in a couple of anthologies I've been examining. In Best American Noir of the Century, he is referred to as the greatest suspense writer. In Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, he is thrice represented and referred to as the greatest noir writer, period. "His biographer, Francis Nevins Jr., rated Woolrich the fourth best crime writer of his day, behind only Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner." - wikipedia.

But he far exceeded these others in terms of writings transformed into film (and perhaps also, dramatic radio plays). Hitchcock and Truffaut are among those who drew inspiration from Woolrich's writings, Hitchcock in the form of Rear Window based on a Woolrich short story It Had to Be Murderin turn said to be based on an H.G. Wells' short story, Through a Window. Before he turned to crime writing, he was hailed critically as kindred to F. Scott Fitzgerald whose prose he is said to have wanted to emulate.

Woolrich was a homosexual, active while young. This is said to have contributed to the brevity of an attempt at marriage to the daughter of a silent film producer. He later became an alcoholic recluse living decades in a hotel room wasting away and dying due to "self-neglect" weighing just 80 some pounds when he died in 1968 at age 64. (wikipedia). He left his considerable estate to a Columbia School of Journalism scholarship program in his mother's name. Many of his novels are not reprinted because of estate issues.

Rendezvous in Black is said to have been one of Woolrich's two personal favorites. I could not love it though because the main character/villain's elaborate revenge fantasy seemed just that. It didn't ring true to me that someone so warped by personal experience could turn into such a diabolically efficient killer. In fact, the plot seemed a bit cheesy, overly contrived, and even cliche by today's jaded standards: Man loses fiancee due to freak accident related to acts of oblivious careless drunken friends on a hunter expedition. He then targets the most dearly loved female of the group of drunks and kills them, always managing to snuff them on the same date he lost his fiancee. Intrepid detective cottons on to this silly scheme but fails to prevent the murderer from completing his itinerary. It was turned into a very 70's exploitation Italian film (with mediocre reviews) called Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (~1972). Ugh.

Quality of the writing - mature and strong, bit of a page-turner.

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Nov 27, 2011 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: hardboiled_crime_fiction_read

I had high expectations of this book as it is usually held up as one of Woolrich's better novels, the last of his "Black" novels. But he stretches credulity to an almost absurd length and asks us to buy into it. I also have trouble following the storyline sometimes because his subtlety is such that it's overlooked and I find myself rereading passages to figure out the implications.

The story opens when a young girl, waiting outside a drugstore for her beau, is killed by a whiskey bottle falling f...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 ta...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Andrewh rated it 3 of 5 stars

Woolrich is a strange writer - he had more stories turned into films than any other noir writer (56, including Rear Window, for example), but is barely known. This book is one of his most famous, and is a revenge-murder story, albeit a slightly warped one. The style is not really what I think of as 'noir', not being set in the underworld of a big, bad city, but in suburban America, and the characters certainly don't speak in the hard-boiled poetic phrases of Chandler's, but rather seem very ordi...more

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May 23, 2013 Mariano Hortal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-noir-hardboiled-detective, north-american-literature

Publicado en http://lecturaylocura.com/no-se-cansa...

Cada uno de estos libros merecería una entrada propia. Normalmente suelo unirlos en posts conjuntos, porque si no, el blog estaría lleno de entradas de la excelente colección de novela negra/policíaca del sello de RBA Serie Negra. En esta ocasión, y aprovechando el tirón de este monográfico de literatura de género, os pongo a continuación una nueva batería con tres clásicos que ordenaré de más moderno a más antiguo.
El primero del que voy a hab...more

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Jun 08, 2010 RB Love rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-2010

Recommended to me by Eileen McGowan and tripped up a little by her sister CJ who hit me with a key spoiler about the plot when she learned I was reading it. I'd never heard of this book or writer, Cornell Woolrich, until Eileen loaned me this book. And now I'm hooked.
Woolrich was apparently as openly gay a writer as one could be in the '30's and 40's when his work was either successfully pre-dating or coinciding with the pillars of the noir edifice, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, Erle Stanle...more Recommended to me by Eileen McGowan and tripped up a little by her sister CJ who hit me with a key spoiler about the plot when she learned I was reading it. I'd never heard of this book or writer, Cornell Woolrich, until Eileen loaned me this book. And now I'm hooked.
Woolrich was apparently as openly gay a writer as one could be in the '30's and 40's when his work was either successfully pre-dating or coinciding with the pillars of the noir edifice, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, Erle Stanley Gardner, (another name I just learned due to this book), and Jim Thompson and James M. Cain.
The writing is rich with the hardboiled lines and dramatic prose that I love. You can open to nearly any page in the book and catch a gem;
"Because they'd first met, you see, when she was seven and he was eight. And they'd fallen in love when he was eight and she was seven. Sometimes it does happen that way." p. 1.
"Something with red headlights, a chariot from hell, was jockeying around out there, backing into position." p. 6.
"He knew her way of smiling complacently, eyelids half down, in a way that infuriated women, but wasn't meant for them anyway." p.30.
"They went over and sat down, under a bleaching needle-like shower of violet-white arc rays."p. 74.
"These good dames," said Rusty, tightlipped. "Give me a bum like I am."p.86.
"From the theatre, at half past eleven, they went to a Chinese restaurant and dance spot. Pseudo-Chinese. The waiters were Chinese and the food was the "Chinese" food that China never knew but that Americans think is Chinese. But the band played "The Jersey Bounce" and the biggest seller at the bar seemed to be the Martinis. And the man whose money was invested in it was named Goldberg." p.109.
"She dialed a number. She made the wheel go around so fast it sounded like rain hitting a tin bucket."p.121.
"You're going out with Madeline Drew. If you say you're not, you're a liar." The adjective he used to modify the noun was unprintable. p. 125.
"When a girl's not in love, she hates it if you're not a gentleman. When she is in love, she hates it if - you are." p. 130.
And so on. Gorgeously.
Knowing that the author was a gay man made me notice some sort of generalized intimations and capabilities Woolrich brought to the narrative that I found unique. At one point an investigator uses fashion details to try and time-date a photo of a source. And the masterful coverage of the depth of the senses and perceptions of the chapters following a blind victim I chauvinistically attribute to the sensitivities of a gay male narrator.
The suspense, the premise for the story and the timelessness of Woolrich's treatment, teasing the reader along, deliciously, painfully - it's quite an accomplishment. I look forward to reading more of his works. A short story of his, "It Had To Be Murder" was apparently the nexus for Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and consequently 2007's Disturbia starring Shia LeBeouf. Another 28 films credit his writing as the source story. As usual, the joy of discovering a writer of this magnitude and talent is a boon to a reader, like me, and a crime that Mr. Woolrich and his work is not better known and as celebrated as that of his peers.

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Feb 20, 2008 E rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who don't mind highly improbable plots

So Johnny Marr's girlfriend Dorothy turns up murdered on page 2, and Johnny somehow comes up with a list of five men who presumably are the culprits.

From there, I expected a straight-up revenge story, but no. Johnny drops out of the story pretty much altogether, and the rest is told from the point of view of the men and the victims of Johnny's revenge: the most important women in the men's lives. Woolrich chooses not to reveal how Dorothy was killed or whether or not Johnny's been targeting the...more

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Jan 13, 2008 Jorge rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm not sure when the term "serial killer" came into common use, much less when the serial killer subgenre became popular in fiction.

"Rendezvous in Black," first published in 1948, has got to be one of the earlier examples and it's still one of the best.

The story centers on Johnny Marr (presumably no relation to The Smiths' guitarist), a young man whose bride-to-be is killed in a bizarre accident. Marr vows revenge on the five men he holds responsible for his lover's death. Rather than kill ea...more

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May 17, 2010 Anders rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Kevin Wright rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Rendezvous in Black is a lean, mean, dark, deftly-written tale. Woolrich definitely deserves his spot alongside Hammett, Chandler and Cain as a classic noir/crime fiction writer. Woolrich is known as a master of suspense, but this novel was surprising to me for another reason: it's really about love. One of the key lines comes toward the end, where one of the characters muses something along the lines of "What is this strange emotion that brings out the best and the worst in us?"

The five vignet...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this right after reading The Bride Wore Black, and it's essentially the same story structure. This one was written 8 years later, and it shows. The dialogue, while still creaky, is a little more naturalistic. The plot is a bit more sadistic. The suspense is unbeatable. I can't complain about how implausible these books are, because they have their own nightmare logic. Compulsively readable.

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Feb 08, 2010 Woolrich13 rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent, utterly dark roman noir, featuring a very clever yet highly sympathetic serial killer and some alternately frightening and beautiful set pieces, especially at the very conclusion of the novel as the mixed psychological reactions of an undercover policewoman are revealed. It's a very sad book, and, I think, Woolrich's best, even more so than its twin in terms of plot, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK.

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Jun 05, 2009 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crimes-disasters, fiction-literature

Really enjoyed this. Yes, there are plot holes you can drive a truck through, and yes, sometimes Woolrich runs off at the mouth--er, pen--to the detriment of the action.

But I kinda didn't care; something about his writing generates a mood and tension that never let up. If you're a fan of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, by all means check this out.

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Apr 15, 2009 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: noirboiled

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 absurdi...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Rachel Penso rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a fairly quick read at just over 200 pages. The characters weren't very well developed. I didn't really feel a connection with any one of them. The story itself was entertaining and I couldn't decide whether to give it three or four stars. Because even if I didn't feel much for the characters themselves, I was definitely connected to the story.

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Jan 16, 2009 Johnny rated it 5 of 5 stars

While the story is very similar to Woolrich's more famous, "The Bride Wore Black", I personally prefer "Rendezvous". The execution of the story and the bleakness of the story work together to make this one of the blackest of the noir series.

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Nov 04, 2011 Steve Banes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh god, where has this book been my entire life? A real stunner, scary, funny, sadistic, sad... it's all the things that make a terrific detective / murder mystery book that much more terrific than every other detective / murder mystery you've read by everyone else in the world. Ever. Actually, I just did this story a serious disservice by classifying it as a "detective / murder mystery", because in typical Woolrich fashion it's much more than that. So much more.

FYI: Ignore the Good Reads synop...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Boiler plate detective story. It's kinda dated; female characters are, for the most part, helpless, flighty or just plain dumb. Male characters are overbearing, womanizing assholes or just out and out clueless. I never really bought into the motivations of the killer or the detective. The ending is silly and contrived.

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Jan 26, 2013 Aki Umemoto rated it 4 of 5 stars

Excellent revenge story, very creative in its execution (no pun intended!), but the writing is uneven, sometimes confusing. Ending fits but it is anticlimactic.

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Jan 18, 2010 Pam rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can't remember the last time a book gave me palpitations. The intro said Woolrich was a master at tension -- that's an understatement.

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Apr 30, 2013 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Old-school noir mystery. Very cool writing style, but the plot and characters are dated. Ending seemed rushed. Still a good read.

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Sep 27, 2007 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hardboiled Characters

Rendezvous in Black is why the French termed these books Roman Noir as they flooded in after the war embargo. Johnny Marr awaits the perfect girl outside their spot...true romance, a smile that looks beautiful as she sees him and beautiful in reverse as they part. Corny, but hey are to be married the following day. Insightful, precise writing, which takes an early dark edge when a low-flying charter plane filled with drunken men causes her death. Darkness envelopes the book as on each black anni...more

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About Cornell Woolrich

Cornell 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...more

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