What do you think?
Rate this book
Nightwebs
Cornell Woolrich was a haunted man who lived a life of reclusive misery, but he was also a uniquely gifted writer who explored the classic noir themes of loneliness, despair and futility. His stories are masterpieces of psychological suspense and mystery, and they have inspired classic movies like Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride wore Black. This collection brings together twelve of his finest, most powerful and disturbing tales.
Contains the stories:
- Graves for the Living
- The Red Tide
- The Corpse Next Door
- You'll Never See Me Again
- Dusk to Dawn
- Murder at the Automat
- Death in the Air
- Mamie 'n' Me
- The Screaming Laugh
- One and a Half Murders
- Dead on Her Feet
- One Night in Barcelona
- The Penny-a-Worder
- The Number's Up
- Too Nice a Day to Die
- Life is Weird Sometimes
(N.B: The last four stories are not included in the Crime Masterworks edition.)
Contains the stories:
- Graves for the Living
- The Red Tide
- The Corpse Next Door
- You'll Never See Me Again
- Dusk to Dawn
- Murder at the Automat
- Death in the Air
- Mamie 'n' Me
- The Screaming Laugh
- One and a Half Murders
- Dead on Her Feet
- One Night in Barcelona
- The Penny-a-Worder
- The Number's Up
- Too Nice a Day to Die
- Life is Weird Sometimes
(N.B: The last four stories are not included in the Crime Masterworks edition.)
362 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
3 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Cornell Woolrich
453 books464 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 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 26, 2022
Did you ever sleep in an apt "wall-bed"? Popular long ago for small flats, the bed popped out at night and became an armoire by day, w desk or table in front of it. My elderly aunt, w one bedr apt, had a wall-bed in her living room. It was fun for me to sleep there now and then. But, what if I got walled-up? This happens in "The Corpse Next Door" (1937). Which is why Woolrich has been called "The Poe of the 20th Century." Here's a ripping story of chaos.
NYCs elevated trains in the 30s-40s, steamy bars, tawdry
clubs, furnished rooms-apts, the flashing of neon and aroma
of cigarette smoke w crummy booze -- Woolrich. Maybe salt
sprays in Atlantic City or looming suburban shadows --
Woolrich, a writer of sadism & paranoia. He grips, even
w implausiblity; he chokes you with suspense.
Woolrich deletes the always boring (to me) detective.
His peops are lonelies -- the devastated -- on-their-own.
Some are killers. No one, usually, has any money, but,
good or bad, they're coping with neuroses and the pain
of living. Woolrich himself, having sold more stories
and novels to the movies than anyone, endured extreme
mental pain and, later, alcoholism. TIME's astute film critic, Richard Corliss, called him "the godfather of film noir."
His brief marriage was a sham and, shamed, he moved back
in with Mum; they lived on and on in NYC hotels. (Did his lonely personal life fuel the tense pacing and atmosphere of his stories?) His works have been adapted x Hitchcock, Truffaut, Fassbinder, Robt Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur. Plus B-dirs you never heard of. Woolrich was a man trapped, and this ghastliness (of the unspoken) is what he captures. Who was he, really? No one knows. He can leave you paralyzed in a nightmare that becomes the American Scream.
==
Adapted movies include Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Phantom Lady, No Man of Her Own, Deadline at Dawn.
NYCs elevated trains in the 30s-40s, steamy bars, tawdry
clubs, furnished rooms-apts, the flashing of neon and aroma
of cigarette smoke w crummy booze -- Woolrich. Maybe salt
sprays in Atlantic City or looming suburban shadows --
Woolrich, a writer of sadism & paranoia. He grips, even
w implausiblity; he chokes you with suspense.
Woolrich deletes the always boring (to me) detective.
His peops are lonelies -- the devastated -- on-their-own.
Some are killers. No one, usually, has any money, but,
good or bad, they're coping with neuroses and the pain
of living. Woolrich himself, having sold more stories
and novels to the movies than anyone, endured extreme
mental pain and, later, alcoholism. TIME's astute film critic, Richard Corliss, called him "the godfather of film noir."
His brief marriage was a sham and, shamed, he moved back
in with Mum; they lived on and on in NYC hotels. (Did his lonely personal life fuel the tense pacing and atmosphere of his stories?) His works have been adapted x Hitchcock, Truffaut, Fassbinder, Robt Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur. Plus B-dirs you never heard of. Woolrich was a man trapped, and this ghastliness (of the unspoken) is what he captures. Who was he, really? No one knows. He can leave you paralyzed in a nightmare that becomes the American Scream.
==
Adapted movies include Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Phantom Lady, No Man of Her Own, Deadline at Dawn.
July 1, 2019
So, I read a few selections from this collection of Woolrich's short fiction (sampling from throughout his career starting in the pulps and right up to his later-life work) for two reasons - 1 - I was doing some research for a suitable story for an intended Pseudopod episode about Noir-Horror hybrids (assuming rights can be gained) and - 2 - I also reached Woolrich on my "random short stories" list that I'm trying to power my way through. So I didn't read everything here - I would have liked to but the book is 700 odd pages and I have a lot of reading on my plate at the moment - but I did read some stories from my list and a few that sounded exceptionally good from the introduction. And then back to Inter-Library Loan it goes...
Of what I read:
"Graves For The Living" - a full-bore pulp horror crime story in which a man with a morbid obsession with premature burial (how Poe!) runs afoul of the Friends Of Death - a secret society that offers members eternal life (or at least resurrection from natural death) in return for loyalty and financial remuneration - but if you break the rules, you get buried alive! (just his luck!). This has a great dramatic "cut to the chase" opening (even if it then necessitates a rather unlikely extended flashback, given the dire circumstances) written in a suspenseful pulpy style that just clips along (what could be more pulp than a secret society that's infiltrated the nation and meets in a seemingly abandoned country mansion where they maintain their own private graveyard and perform initiation rituals in black robes and skull masks?!? They're practically *begging* to have The Spider burst through the doors and gun them down while cackling insanely!). As usual with a secret society story, paranoia is all embracing (they're everywhere and know everything!) which gives us a superb moment mid-story involving a crowded train station and a telephone booth and - presaging later Woolrich - there's a hideous moment of implied police torture of an informer (purely to save someone's life, you understand!). The story rattles along with such punchy writing that you can kind of forgive the formulaic ending (it's a truism that vast conspiracies are easier to dispose of convincingly in novels rather than short stories, where the quick dismantling draws the reader's attention to the literary sleight of hand the author pulled in the first place). A fun read!
"The Corpse Next Door" - the first of two standard Woolrich models here - the man who impulsively commits murder and then tries (and fails) to cover it up while guilt eats away at him. In this instance, a late-night fight over a stolen bottle of milk is the instigating moment that leads to an angry man's breakdown and, eventually, another killing. Nice sketch of rising paranoia and guilt, along with Depression-era housing situations (coming soon to a economically car-crashed, post-"W" country near you!)
"Dusk To Dawn" - Basic Woolrich plot #2 - An innocent man is suspected of a murder he didn't commit and the chase escalates matters horribly. Here, a poverty stricken young man (as might be expected, The Great Depression and poverty figure large in Woolrich's fiction) makes the desperate decision to pick a man's pocket in a movie theater, only to find his mark is dead. Nobody does "spiral into nightmare" scenarios as good as Woolrich and here things take an unexpected and morally ambivalent turn as acts of crime and violence keep escalating exponentially until a surprisingly quiet finale that deflates the bubble of aggression with a pinprick of knowledge. Well done (this features a great rooftop fight scene, btw!)
The "Penny-A-Worder" is a non-crime story, more in an O-Henry mode (including an ironic surprise ending), a structure Woolrich uses here to sketch his personal knowledge of the realities of writing fiction for pulp magazines under strict deadlines as an up-and-coming wordsmith must craft a story overnight tailored to fit a lurid cover painting. There's some very well-observed details here on the mechanics of writing and the flow of imagination.
"The Number's Up" is an excellent story and my favorite of what I read - a brutal tale of Mob violence directed at a young couple, it has a particularly cold and cynical view of the world as events keep progressing beyond the point where hope dies. And then a little fillip at the end to drive home the point of a cold, random universe. Great stuff.
"Life Is Weird Sometimes" is actually the opening chapter of Woolrich's unpublished later novel THE LOSER, but stands alone as an interesting character study of a man who opens the tale having just committed murder and then follows him to his eventual night in jail on completely different charges. Very engaging.
Cornell Woolrich is another author model I wish modern fiction writers would rediscover, especially those who profess a disdain for the literary approach and knowingly plant their flag on pulp turf - he might help such amateurs realize that pulp is not an excuse for sloppiness (in fact, just the opposite) and noir is not about regurgitating hackneyed phrases and nostalgic settings and half-baked, cynical worldviews so much as it's about generating a palpable sense of a world in which morality has been upended and all the lies stripped off the pasteboard faiths and promises sold to us by the morally bankrupt preceding generations (hold on tight, it's coming round the bend again!) leaving us with... what? Ahh, there's the question. And in the midst of telling stories in this world, the competent writer should also make time for a poetic (if barbed) turn of phrase or psychological character sketch, assuming he's really got the chops to walk it like he talks it.
Excellent stuff - and I still have some more Woolrich to hunt down in other anthologies!
Of what I read:
"Graves For The Living" - a full-bore pulp horror crime story in which a man with a morbid obsession with premature burial (how Poe!) runs afoul of the Friends Of Death - a secret society that offers members eternal life (or at least resurrection from natural death) in return for loyalty and financial remuneration - but if you break the rules, you get buried alive! (just his luck!). This has a great dramatic "cut to the chase" opening (even if it then necessitates a rather unlikely extended flashback, given the dire circumstances) written in a suspenseful pulpy style that just clips along (what could be more pulp than a secret society that's infiltrated the nation and meets in a seemingly abandoned country mansion where they maintain their own private graveyard and perform initiation rituals in black robes and skull masks?!? They're practically *begging* to have The Spider burst through the doors and gun them down while cackling insanely!). As usual with a secret society story, paranoia is all embracing (they're everywhere and know everything!) which gives us a superb moment mid-story involving a crowded train station and a telephone booth and - presaging later Woolrich - there's a hideous moment of implied police torture of an informer (purely to save someone's life, you understand!). The story rattles along with such punchy writing that you can kind of forgive the formulaic ending (it's a truism that vast conspiracies are easier to dispose of convincingly in novels rather than short stories, where the quick dismantling draws the reader's attention to the literary sleight of hand the author pulled in the first place). A fun read!
"The Corpse Next Door" - the first of two standard Woolrich models here - the man who impulsively commits murder and then tries (and fails) to cover it up while guilt eats away at him. In this instance, a late-night fight over a stolen bottle of milk is the instigating moment that leads to an angry man's breakdown and, eventually, another killing. Nice sketch of rising paranoia and guilt, along with Depression-era housing situations (coming soon to a economically car-crashed, post-"W" country near you!)
"Dusk To Dawn" - Basic Woolrich plot #2 - An innocent man is suspected of a murder he didn't commit and the chase escalates matters horribly. Here, a poverty stricken young man (as might be expected, The Great Depression and poverty figure large in Woolrich's fiction) makes the desperate decision to pick a man's pocket in a movie theater, only to find his mark is dead. Nobody does "spiral into nightmare" scenarios as good as Woolrich and here things take an unexpected and morally ambivalent turn as acts of crime and violence keep escalating exponentially until a surprisingly quiet finale that deflates the bubble of aggression with a pinprick of knowledge. Well done (this features a great rooftop fight scene, btw!)
The "Penny-A-Worder" is a non-crime story, more in an O-Henry mode (including an ironic surprise ending), a structure Woolrich uses here to sketch his personal knowledge of the realities of writing fiction for pulp magazines under strict deadlines as an up-and-coming wordsmith must craft a story overnight tailored to fit a lurid cover painting. There's some very well-observed details here on the mechanics of writing and the flow of imagination.
"The Number's Up" is an excellent story and my favorite of what I read - a brutal tale of Mob violence directed at a young couple, it has a particularly cold and cynical view of the world as events keep progressing beyond the point where hope dies. And then a little fillip at the end to drive home the point of a cold, random universe. Great stuff.
"Life Is Weird Sometimes" is actually the opening chapter of Woolrich's unpublished later novel THE LOSER, but stands alone as an interesting character study of a man who opens the tale having just committed murder and then follows him to his eventual night in jail on completely different charges. Very engaging.
Cornell Woolrich is another author model I wish modern fiction writers would rediscover, especially those who profess a disdain for the literary approach and knowingly plant their flag on pulp turf - he might help such amateurs realize that pulp is not an excuse for sloppiness (in fact, just the opposite) and noir is not about regurgitating hackneyed phrases and nostalgic settings and half-baked, cynical worldviews so much as it's about generating a palpable sense of a world in which morality has been upended and all the lies stripped off the pasteboard faiths and promises sold to us by the morally bankrupt preceding generations (hold on tight, it's coming round the bend again!) leaving us with... what? Ahh, there's the question. And in the midst of telling stories in this world, the competent writer should also make time for a poetic (if barbed) turn of phrase or psychological character sketch, assuming he's really got the chops to walk it like he talks it.
Excellent stuff - and I still have some more Woolrich to hunt down in other anthologies!
May 13, 2023
05/2015
In his lengthy introduction, Woolrich's biographer Francis Nevins uses, about the writer's work, the term Functional Illogic. This is cool but I'm still puzzling it out. I, myself, call it Dreamlike logic. Is this what he means?
This book is a collection of long stories such as Graves for the Living (in which the cult Friends of Death mills about in evening clothes and 3D skull masks), and Dusk to Dawn (not the only story where the mere assumption of guilt leads the hero on a kill-crazy rampage). You'll Never See Me Again is gripping.
In his lengthy introduction, Woolrich's biographer Francis Nevins uses, about the writer's work, the term Functional Illogic. This is cool but I'm still puzzling it out. I, myself, call it Dreamlike logic. Is this what he means?
This book is a collection of long stories such as Graves for the Living (in which the cult Friends of Death mills about in evening clothes and 3D skull masks), and Dusk to Dawn (not the only story where the mere assumption of guilt leads the hero on a kill-crazy rampage). You'll Never See Me Again is gripping.
November 28, 2021
3.5
La toile de l'araignée, est un recueil de six nouvelles, de l'auteur américain Cornell Woolrich, aussi connu sous le nom de William Irish. Les protagonistes de ces nouvelles sont des gens normaux (parfois dérangés), qui n'ont rien d'un héros, et qui se trouvent mêlés à des histoires à la fois étranges et ordinaires.
Des Tombes Pour Les Vivants - 3/5
A Mourir de Rire - 4/5
Mamie et Moi - 2.5/5
Un Cadavre Sur le Palier - 4.5/5
La Vie Est Parfois Etrange - 3/5
Une Nuit à Barcelone - 4/5
La toile de l'araignée, est un recueil de six nouvelles, de l'auteur américain Cornell Woolrich, aussi connu sous le nom de William Irish. Les protagonistes de ces nouvelles sont des gens normaux (parfois dérangés), qui n'ont rien d'un héros, et qui se trouvent mêlés à des histoires à la fois étranges et ordinaires.
Des Tombes Pour Les Vivants - 3/5
A Mourir de Rire - 4/5
Mamie et Moi - 2.5/5
Un Cadavre Sur le Palier - 4.5/5
La Vie Est Parfois Etrange - 3/5
Une Nuit à Barcelone - 4/5
September 30, 2021
Excellent collection of some of Woolrich’s best stories. I would recommend this to fans of, and/or anyone considering reading the author as the editor included a very detailed checklist of the writer’s works. For me, Nevins introduction and bibliography alone were worth the price of the book
February 24, 2010
I could not put this book down, his stories varied from amusing twists to truly horrifying visions of criminal minds. A shame he isn't read more widely these days
September 15, 2014
Woolrich was insanely prolific, especially for such a supposedly fragile alcoholic. By the time I found this book in my store I thought I'd read most of his short stories, but almost all of these were new to me and great late night fun. Like Highsmith he's not the tightest plot spinner, but the psychological/emotional pull of his writing is brutally good. At the end of this is a little hidden gem - a chapter from the final novel he was working on, The Loner. Definitely seemed like strong work plowing new fields, too bad he couldn't have hung on longer with gasping liver and wall rattling nightmares.
October 12, 2021
For many years I looked forward to reading this; Woolrich's reputation is such that all fans of Noir must read him. However, on every level, 'Nightwebs' disappoints. Both Hammett and Chandler wrote masterpieces for the pulps, so it is possible. These tales though invariably harbour fatal flaws. Woolrich's stories - these ones at any rate - are full of rice paper thin characters performing in preposterous plots, all told in a style that does nothing to aid the reader suspend their disbelief. I recently read Christie's, 'The Murder of Robert Ackroyd', which is similarly silly in plot, but Christie knows how to make her tales work within the rules of their own worlds. They hold together, but the seem believable. Not so Woolrich's! Francis Nevins in his introduction says as much, but he tries to make the case that the ridiculous plots are an attempt at shining a light on the absurdity of the Universe. That's charitable at best. I will admit that he handles description of place and action with admirable precision; unlike many another writer, you are rarely confused by the simple mechanics of a chase or the placement of a suspicious car. And when I got to the last story, I almost added another star. With its hint of Hemingway, and whiff of Faulkner, I was seriously reconsidering my opinion. Then, as usual, it took that one twist too many and I almost threw the thing out the window. Very disappointing stuff.
February 8, 2019
I love Woolrich's seedy array of loners and oddball characters. He's almost always interesting. I say 'almost always' as some stories can seem a bit unfocussed, and for me, fail to grab the attention (eg. Mamie 'n' Me and One And A Half Murders). I would recommend another collection to first-timers - Night And Fear - in which the hit rate is higher than this collection. Still, probably half of these are pretty good - Graves For The Living, The Corpse Next Door, You'll Never See Me Again, The Screaming Laugh and the carefully constructed and atmospheric One Night In Barcelona. I also liked much of Dusk To Dawn, particularly the typically bizarre Woolrich scenario of a pickpocket in a dark cinema getting his sleeve caught in the jacket of the man he's trying to rob, it's just a pity that the story then goes on to suffer from one of Woolrich's shortcomings (which I can usually accept), namely a lack of logic/believability as this minor criminal all of a sudden enters a different bloodthirsty league.
Worth a read, but I'd go for the commonly available Night And Fear collection first.
Worth a read, but I'd go for the commonly available Night And Fear collection first.
March 28, 2023
Cornell Woolrich is the tops! An excellent series of short stories that vary in plot and characters. Absolutely brilliant writing. I was so engaged I couldn’t stop reading. He is not just a great mystery writer, he is a great writer period!
February 25, 2018
Un recueil de nouvelles captivantes avec certaines chutes originales.
Read
August 9, 2008Cornell Woolrich was the poet-laureate of noir. His career as a pulp writer spanned the ‘30s and ‘40s. His output was large and distinguished by many successful screen adaptations. Yet, Woolrich is little known outside of crime novel aficionados. Perhaps it is because of the intense darkness he found beneath the sunlit world.
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2007...
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2007...
Want to read
June 16, 2023Read so far:
*Graves for the living--
The red tide --
The corpse next door --
*You'll never see me again --
Dusk to dawn --
Murder at the automat --2
Death in the air --2
*Mamie 'n' me --
The screaming laugh --
*One and a half murders --
Dead on her feet --
One night in Barcelona --
The penny-a-worder (aka The pulp writer)--2
The number's up --
Too nice a day to die --
Life is weird sometimes --
*Graves for the living--
The red tide --
The corpse next door --
*You'll never see me again --
Dusk to dawn --
Murder at the automat --2
Death in the air --2
*Mamie 'n' me --
The screaming laugh --
*One and a half murders --
Dead on her feet --
One night in Barcelona --
The penny-a-worder (aka The pulp writer)--2
The number's up --
Too nice a day to die --
Life is weird sometimes --
October 10, 2008
We read 'Graves for the Living' for last month's book club. It was the creepiest thing I've ever read. At around 50 pages, the is the perfect read-aloud for Halloween night. This story is said to be the second scariest ghost story...but I think it's better that number one ('The Monkey's Paw').
January 27, 2014
de paura II ai bacilli di Mr Woolrich non � vaccinato nessuno. Paura certa.
September 17, 2015
Excelent collection of crime and suspense stories
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews