What do you think?
Rate this book
Literary Noir: A Series of Suspense: Volume Two
Literary A Series of Suspense is a collection of some of the finest short stories and novellas Cornell Woolrich wrote throughout his career. Some of the titles within this collection are well known amongst pulp-fiction and noir fans, while some have not been published in decades. Many of these titles have been made into television shows and feature films throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and were the inspiration for many thrillers in the following years. Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers, and sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish or George Hopley. He invented and mastered the genre of "Pulp-Fiction" and wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and full length novels. One of his most famous stories is It Had to be Murder which was adapted into the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window in 1954. Each Volume within this series was curated thematically to give the reader a straightforward, no-nonsense Woolrich experience. Read at your own risk. Volume Two of Literary Noir contains four bizarre and lurid - I’m Dangerous Tonight - Jane Brown’s Body - Mystery in Room 913 - The Moon of Montezuma Follow this title with Literary Noir Volume Rave Against the Clock / Whodunit?, and Literary Noir Volume Race Against the Clock and Escape! Countless other Woolrich Novels, Novellas and Short Stories are also available as EBooks from the Estate of Cornell Woolrich and Renaissance Literary & Talent.
301 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 11, 2018
31 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Cornell Woolrich
438 books475 followersCornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including "William Irish" and "George Hopley" [...] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.
Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]
Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 11, 2024
As noir and suspense and crime tales in general began to loose their way in our time, they became graphically brutal, dismal and sleazy, often narrated by and/or peopled by unredeemable characters and/or psychotics, the darker, furthest fringes of noir/crime stories creeping ever closer to the mainstream center to slowly smother with a pillow and suffocate the more literate and classier styles of writers like Cornell Woolrich and Fletcher Fora, from halcyon days for the genres. This resulted from a concerted effort to pander to a desensitized and decaying society so desirous to wallow in the aforementioned they would embrace nothing else. The sublime short stories of writers like Flora, and the short stories and novels of the man who created his own genre of noir suspense, Cornell Woolrich, have become victims of the slide, their stories now more obscure, moved toward the fringes as the uglier and less worthy fringes moved toward the center.
At least some of Flora’s great short stories of noir mystery and crime have found a small life on Kindle. Woolrich is considered the master, many of his big novels and even short stories being adapted to film, so he has fared somewhat better. He still doesn’t merit but a rare, limited print edition on real paper every blue moon, but he is available on Kindle, and readers are better off for it.
Not only are Woolrich’s famous novels available electronically, but many of his best short works are available now in Kindle collections. Because he wrote everything from weird menace to whiz-bang pulp crime, fatalistic romance wrapped in a mystery or crime, readers can get a sense of his great — and I mean GREAT talent, his prose and ability to draw a reader into his world, and the tale he was spinning on display in many shades. Raymond Chandler likened some of the best Woolrich tales to a “Fever Dream.”
I’M DANGEROUS TONIGHT
“She closed the door, and moved down the circular stone-stairs with a rustling sound, such as a snake might make on a bed of dry leaves.”
I had previously read all the stories in this one with the exception of I’m Dangerous Tonight. Though a huge Woolrich fan, I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. Woolrich was spinning a tale that bordered at first on horror; not normal horror, but supernatural horror. But knowing from reading so many of his other works the classy restraint he always showed as he unwound his literary — even his pulp was literary — stories, I kept going even after a particularly atmospheric opening vignette contained a disturbing scene that in another writer’s hands would have turned me off. In sticking with it I found the pot of gold.
What initially appears to be a series of vignettes, thinly tied together by the evil creation of a Paris designer, Maldonado, which transforms anyone who wears it — even touches it — into a dark-hearted and manipulative killer, slowly becomes more — much more. A cop named Fisher, a crook named Belden and his dame, and an old score to settle tie this all together into a gritty little literary noir tale as well as a tale of the supernatural garment.
From a writer’s standpoint it’s stunning how Woolrich pulls this off. From a reader’s standpoint it’s terrific. There is the same type of episodic feel to this lengthy yet satisfying noir as in one of Woolrich’s famous Black novels, Black Alibi. It’s marvelous if you love classy traditional noir and a weird tale touched with the supernatural. You have to persevere, get into the flow of what Woolrich is doing, but once you do, you’ll be rewarded by an exciting conclusion as only Woolrich could write it. Terrific stuff!
JANE BROWN’S BODY
This novelette has an odd narrative voice that is startling for Woolrich, who had a special knack for such — and as much as I love nearly everything he wrote, from fatalistic to whimsy — I can only recommend this one for Woolrich completists.
You accept coincidence and some implausibility when reading Woolrich, because he’s so entertaining you don’t care. There’s quite a bit here, but even that is made more palatable because here he is telling a story which borders on Science Fiction. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, because there’s no bigger fan of his work, but it isn’t the story that let me down here on this one — the premise, in fact, is terrific — but the execution.
More than any other writer I’ve ever read — only Robert Nathan is in the same stratosphere — Woolrich was genius at finding the right voice (male or female) from which to tell the story. If first-person worked best, or third-person, that’s where he went. Here, the narrator feels like some unseen person relating a minute by minute account of the story as it unfolds. Because we’re not hearing it from O’Shaughnessy’s head, nor Nova’s — which would have been difficult, but interesting — we don’t get any warm connection to them, or the story. As pure pulp, it’s okay, but as Woolrich, it’s subpar.
The opening is atmospheric enough, as we follow a man racing through the night with a sleeping woman — though she may not be just sleeping — in the back of the car. But that narrative voice I mentioned, and the odd tone Woolrich gives it is distracting from the get-go. Eventually we change scenes to O’Shaughnessy, and the story begins unfolding.
The real story concerns a scientist named Denholt, who has created a serum for revivification. At a remote location, a young woman named Nova, who is sweet and child-like, is trapped. When O’Shaughnessy survives a plane crash he happens upon the lovely Nova. This leads him to Denholt. What follows is a tale of escape, tremendous coincidence once they do, and the revelation that Nova must return…
The ending should be poignant, deeply sad, but that odd narrative tone has kept us distanced from the heart of either character. While that isn’t unusual for pulp, it’s unusual for Woolrich. Worth reading for fans, but I suspect the average reader will find this odd and hokey. A rare one from the master that just doesn’t hold up well.
MYSTERY IN ROOM 913
Mystery in Room 913 is a near perfect little pulp mystery/suspense story. Despite the brevity of the tale — which is in the seventy-page ballpark — you get a clear impression of the characters from the moment you meet them, an atmosphere for the setting, and a deep curiosity for what’s behind the mystery of room 913 which will keep you turning pages.
The hotel detective, Striker, is first on the scene when Room 913 claims its initial victim. It’s framed as a suicide but Striker believes it was murder. A year later, a second man suffers the same fate, through the same window, and again a brief, unsigned note allows the very same city detective to write it off as a suicide. Striker knows better, as do others in the hotel, who have begun to suspect something out of the ordinary — perhaps supernatural — is going on in room 913.
Why can you feel a depression in 913? Why does a dog who never whines do so only moments before the victims plunge to their death? What about the devil-mask Striker discovers in a tenant’s room? What to make of the smell of sandalwood? And what to make of the lightning someone claims to have seen at the exact same moment one of the men met his fate? The victims are always single check-ins, never a couple. Striker, frustrated that the copper won’t look into it any further, knows it is only a matter of time before room 913 strikes again.
Some investigation, and a ruse is perpetrated by Striker in order to prevent another death, but the best laid plans don’t always work. Striker’s obsession to know the truth about room 913 leads to an exciting climax and, some would say, fantastically implausible solution.
Written during the 1930s and set during that period, it’s a bit pulpy, but great fun!
THE MOON OF MONTEZUMA
Poetically sad, it’s difficult to categorize this intoxicatingly atmospheric short story by the great Cornell Woolrich. There is a murder, yet it is not a murder mystery, for the reader witnesses the murder. There is perhaps fate taking a hand to set things right for the victim, yet this is not one of his tales about the struggle against fate…Unless, of course, you consider that two people are fated to be together, no matter what form that love must take.
Woolrich sucks the reader in immediately, as a young blonde American with a baby is dropped off by a taxi driver in a remote part of Mexico. Frightened and alone, she makes her way to a house that seems to belong to another time. She is looking for Bill Taylor, the father of her baby. She is utterly alone, and far from anything American or remotely familiar. Just how far is made clear when she knocks on the door and encounters an old woman, and a young beautiful one named Chata. Chata’s dark eyes hold in them the same implicit cruelty as the older woman’s. They are of the Anahuac, and the differences in culture will lead to murder. But then fate takes a hand. And of course, as there is in any tale from the master, there is great coincidence which triggers what is to come.
I can’t really say more without risk ruining the poetically sad conclusion for the reader. The Moon of Montezuma is like a poetic ode to the darkest side of love, its reach so encompassing even death cannot stop it. There is great beauty here, but its smothered in very deep sadness.
First appearing in Fantastic Magazine in November-December of 1952, this story is dripping with atmosphere. There is an aloneness the reader can feel in their soul on these pages, and something primal which goes far beyond cultures. Woolrich spent a good deal of his youth in Mexico and he captures the feel of this lonely and isolated place and its people, but also the feelings of the young American woman with the child, so lost and desperate in what to her is a strange world.
This sad story will linger in your soul long after you turn the final page.
SUMMATION
This collection gets a solid four stars. I had to in honesty take away half a star because of the narrative voice in Jane Brown’s body. The other half star deduction is because I’m judging Woolrich against Woolrich. While the other three stories are wonderful in different ways, I think they’re probably most enjoyable to the Woolrich fan. What I mean by that is that as Woolrich collections go, this one is essential, but, I wouldn’t recommend making it your first dive into anything Woolrich.
That’s a compliment, not a slight. Anything Woolrich is worth reading because he was a wonderful writer, as unique as any who ever penned a story. He is one of my all-time favorite writers, in fact. I love three of the four stories in this collection for varying reasons, but I’d perhaps make it a later pickup, after you’ve read more of his work and have a better understanding of just how special he was as a writer.
At least some of Flora’s great short stories of noir mystery and crime have found a small life on Kindle. Woolrich is considered the master, many of his big novels and even short stories being adapted to film, so he has fared somewhat better. He still doesn’t merit but a rare, limited print edition on real paper every blue moon, but he is available on Kindle, and readers are better off for it.
Not only are Woolrich’s famous novels available electronically, but many of his best short works are available now in Kindle collections. Because he wrote everything from weird menace to whiz-bang pulp crime, fatalistic romance wrapped in a mystery or crime, readers can get a sense of his great — and I mean GREAT talent, his prose and ability to draw a reader into his world, and the tale he was spinning on display in many shades. Raymond Chandler likened some of the best Woolrich tales to a “Fever Dream.”
I’M DANGEROUS TONIGHT
“She closed the door, and moved down the circular stone-stairs with a rustling sound, such as a snake might make on a bed of dry leaves.”
I had previously read all the stories in this one with the exception of I’m Dangerous Tonight. Though a huge Woolrich fan, I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. Woolrich was spinning a tale that bordered at first on horror; not normal horror, but supernatural horror. But knowing from reading so many of his other works the classy restraint he always showed as he unwound his literary — even his pulp was literary — stories, I kept going even after a particularly atmospheric opening vignette contained a disturbing scene that in another writer’s hands would have turned me off. In sticking with it I found the pot of gold.
What initially appears to be a series of vignettes, thinly tied together by the evil creation of a Paris designer, Maldonado, which transforms anyone who wears it — even touches it — into a dark-hearted and manipulative killer, slowly becomes more — much more. A cop named Fisher, a crook named Belden and his dame, and an old score to settle tie this all together into a gritty little literary noir tale as well as a tale of the supernatural garment.
From a writer’s standpoint it’s stunning how Woolrich pulls this off. From a reader’s standpoint it’s terrific. There is the same type of episodic feel to this lengthy yet satisfying noir as in one of Woolrich’s famous Black novels, Black Alibi. It’s marvelous if you love classy traditional noir and a weird tale touched with the supernatural. You have to persevere, get into the flow of what Woolrich is doing, but once you do, you’ll be rewarded by an exciting conclusion as only Woolrich could write it. Terrific stuff!
JANE BROWN’S BODY
This novelette has an odd narrative voice that is startling for Woolrich, who had a special knack for such — and as much as I love nearly everything he wrote, from fatalistic to whimsy — I can only recommend this one for Woolrich completists.
You accept coincidence and some implausibility when reading Woolrich, because he’s so entertaining you don’t care. There’s quite a bit here, but even that is made more palatable because here he is telling a story which borders on Science Fiction. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, because there’s no bigger fan of his work, but it isn’t the story that let me down here on this one — the premise, in fact, is terrific — but the execution.
More than any other writer I’ve ever read — only Robert Nathan is in the same stratosphere — Woolrich was genius at finding the right voice (male or female) from which to tell the story. If first-person worked best, or third-person, that’s where he went. Here, the narrator feels like some unseen person relating a minute by minute account of the story as it unfolds. Because we’re not hearing it from O’Shaughnessy’s head, nor Nova’s — which would have been difficult, but interesting — we don’t get any warm connection to them, or the story. As pure pulp, it’s okay, but as Woolrich, it’s subpar.
The opening is atmospheric enough, as we follow a man racing through the night with a sleeping woman — though she may not be just sleeping — in the back of the car. But that narrative voice I mentioned, and the odd tone Woolrich gives it is distracting from the get-go. Eventually we change scenes to O’Shaughnessy, and the story begins unfolding.
The real story concerns a scientist named Denholt, who has created a serum for revivification. At a remote location, a young woman named Nova, who is sweet and child-like, is trapped. When O’Shaughnessy survives a plane crash he happens upon the lovely Nova. This leads him to Denholt. What follows is a tale of escape, tremendous coincidence once they do, and the revelation that Nova must return…
The ending should be poignant, deeply sad, but that odd narrative tone has kept us distanced from the heart of either character. While that isn’t unusual for pulp, it’s unusual for Woolrich. Worth reading for fans, but I suspect the average reader will find this odd and hokey. A rare one from the master that just doesn’t hold up well.
MYSTERY IN ROOM 913
Mystery in Room 913 is a near perfect little pulp mystery/suspense story. Despite the brevity of the tale — which is in the seventy-page ballpark — you get a clear impression of the characters from the moment you meet them, an atmosphere for the setting, and a deep curiosity for what’s behind the mystery of room 913 which will keep you turning pages.
The hotel detective, Striker, is first on the scene when Room 913 claims its initial victim. It’s framed as a suicide but Striker believes it was murder. A year later, a second man suffers the same fate, through the same window, and again a brief, unsigned note allows the very same city detective to write it off as a suicide. Striker knows better, as do others in the hotel, who have begun to suspect something out of the ordinary — perhaps supernatural — is going on in room 913.
Why can you feel a depression in 913? Why does a dog who never whines do so only moments before the victims plunge to their death? What about the devil-mask Striker discovers in a tenant’s room? What to make of the smell of sandalwood? And what to make of the lightning someone claims to have seen at the exact same moment one of the men met his fate? The victims are always single check-ins, never a couple. Striker, frustrated that the copper won’t look into it any further, knows it is only a matter of time before room 913 strikes again.
Some investigation, and a ruse is perpetrated by Striker in order to prevent another death, but the best laid plans don’t always work. Striker’s obsession to know the truth about room 913 leads to an exciting climax and, some would say, fantastically implausible solution.
Written during the 1930s and set during that period, it’s a bit pulpy, but great fun!
THE MOON OF MONTEZUMA
Poetically sad, it’s difficult to categorize this intoxicatingly atmospheric short story by the great Cornell Woolrich. There is a murder, yet it is not a murder mystery, for the reader witnesses the murder. There is perhaps fate taking a hand to set things right for the victim, yet this is not one of his tales about the struggle against fate…Unless, of course, you consider that two people are fated to be together, no matter what form that love must take.
Woolrich sucks the reader in immediately, as a young blonde American with a baby is dropped off by a taxi driver in a remote part of Mexico. Frightened and alone, she makes her way to a house that seems to belong to another time. She is looking for Bill Taylor, the father of her baby. She is utterly alone, and far from anything American or remotely familiar. Just how far is made clear when she knocks on the door and encounters an old woman, and a young beautiful one named Chata. Chata’s dark eyes hold in them the same implicit cruelty as the older woman’s. They are of the Anahuac, and the differences in culture will lead to murder. But then fate takes a hand. And of course, as there is in any tale from the master, there is great coincidence which triggers what is to come.
I can’t really say more without risk ruining the poetically sad conclusion for the reader. The Moon of Montezuma is like a poetic ode to the darkest side of love, its reach so encompassing even death cannot stop it. There is great beauty here, but its smothered in very deep sadness.
First appearing in Fantastic Magazine in November-December of 1952, this story is dripping with atmosphere. There is an aloneness the reader can feel in their soul on these pages, and something primal which goes far beyond cultures. Woolrich spent a good deal of his youth in Mexico and he captures the feel of this lonely and isolated place and its people, but also the feelings of the young American woman with the child, so lost and desperate in what to her is a strange world.
This sad story will linger in your soul long after you turn the final page.
SUMMATION
This collection gets a solid four stars. I had to in honesty take away half a star because of the narrative voice in Jane Brown’s body. The other half star deduction is because I’m judging Woolrich against Woolrich. While the other three stories are wonderful in different ways, I think they’re probably most enjoyable to the Woolrich fan. What I mean by that is that as Woolrich collections go, this one is essential, but, I wouldn’t recommend making it your first dive into anything Woolrich.
That’s a compliment, not a slight. Anything Woolrich is worth reading because he was a wonderful writer, as unique as any who ever penned a story. He is one of my all-time favorite writers, in fact. I love three of the four stories in this collection for varying reasons, but I’d perhaps make it a later pickup, after you’ve read more of his work and have a better understanding of just how special he was as a writer.
February 24, 2022
Four Cornell Woolrich short stories with a slight supernatural slant, an angle that is fairly unusual for him and that for me only just about worked in half of the stories (the first two). Incidentally those two were also the only ones I hadn't previously read. If there were half star ratings I'd probably give it 3.5 stars but there are too many other of his books that I'd rate 4 star that I just can't make myself avail of that higher rating here.
September 16, 2023
One learns rather sadly from this Woolrich collection of novellas that the wild tormented man did not have the genre range of a Jack Vance or a Dan Simmons. While "Mystery in Room 913" is a solid tale that unknowingly reveals the way that Woolrich's creative mind operated, "I'm Dangerous Tonight" is one of the most ridiculous and melodramatic works of fiction that Woolrich ever wrote. "Jane Brown's Body" is not much better. "The Moon of Montezuma" is sufficient, largely because of its occasionally interesting use of language. But the upshot is that Woolrich was a mood that worked best in comparatively straighter crime fiction, where his emotional intensity flourished within creative limitations.
June 5, 2023
Very unusual for Woolrich. More sci fi/fantasy than most of his work. Still very engaging stories.
February 15, 2024
So many typos!
Cornell Woolrich is a great writer who ought to be better known. Unfortunately, these reprints are so riddled with typos, it's distracting.
Cornell Woolrich is a great writer who ought to be better known. Unfortunately, these reprints are so riddled with typos, it's distracting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews