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The Black Series: Vol.1

af Cornell Woolrich

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Cornell Woolrich has long been considered the father of what became known as noir, yet he never wrote in the hardboiled style. Nor did he write from the gutter. He was never overly graphic nor unduly explicit or vulgar. Yet he was, is, and always will be the greatest purveyor of suspense and crime to ever pen a story. That should be a lesson for noir and suspense writers of today, but in the current climate it goes ignored. It is simply and utterly untrue that every noir book or film has to be a brutal, explicit, expletive-laden story narrated from the gutter or the bottom of a whiskey bottle by characters with little or no redeeming value, whose pessimistic outlook on life determine the fatalistic and downbeat ending. Noir has many shadings, and even on occasion happy endings.

Despite his well-earned reputation for gloom and doom, and the notion that fate was out to squash us like a bug and there was no avoiding it, Woolrich was also a romantic. Those who take exception to that statement really need to read more of his oeuvre than just his Black stories. A surprising number of his tales had quasi, or even full-on happy endings, even though the narrative itself might have contained some of the most suspenseful and doom-laden atmosphere you’ll ever read. This trio from his Black period — Black being in each title — is perhaps the greatest string of suspense novels ever written.

Long out of print except in limited and pricey runs, at least now these Kindle collections give readers a chance to rediscover one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I’m uncertain why The Bride Wore Black was not placed first in this trio of stories, but I suggest beginning with it, then going on to the other two tales of unrelenting suspense. Here is an overview of the stories in this collection, as they appear:


BLACK ALIBI —

“The road was empty behind her, in moonlight and shadow, back as far as the eye could reach. There was only silence, on it and the thickness that bordered it. Silence and moonlight and shadow.”

This is one of very few Woolrich tales I had not yet read, my familiarity more shaded to the great Val Lewton produced thriller, The Leopard Man, which was based on this fabulous novel of suspense. It is one of Woolrich’s “Black” novels, written during that period which cemented him not only as the greatest purveyor of pure noir suspense fiction, but as one of the great writers of the twentieth-century. The opening chapter, while well written and engaging, seemed more straightforward than I’d expected, as American publicity agent Jerry Manning hoists a black Jaguar onto pretty red-haired singer/dancer Kiki Walker, a Detroit girl who, after some misfortune, has found celebrity and influence in the third largest city south of the Panama Canal. But then the Jaguar escapes, and Black Alibi becomes an extraordinary novel of mystery and suspense. Woolrich paints to perfection the atmosphere of “his” Ciudad Real — not Spain, but South America:

“The poor don't cheat one another. They're all poor together.”

Having lived much of his youth in Mexico (if you’re a fan of the tortured author, you know the story) perhaps helped him capture so beautifully the flavor and ambiance of a place through its people. One of those is a policeman named Robles who is under pressure from above to end the brutal, horrific killings of young women by the escaped Jaguar. But it is the victims Woolrich focuses on, letting the reader live in their hearts and minds until that horrific moment when each is overtaken by that unknown thing in the darkness. There is descriptive brilliance in the telling, suspense building to nearly unbearable heights as Woolrich paints a rich and evocative portrait of each young woman, and builds the suspense in each chapter to such a fever pitch, we can’t stop reading:

“She couldn't go back into that maw of darkness behind her that she had passed through once already. True, it was as dark ahead of her, but there was something even worse about darkness revisited than about darkness already explored. As though she would be giving latent evil a second chance at her if she returned.”

There is a bit of The Bride Wore Black/Rendezvous in Black feel to Black Alibi as one by one, someone/something stalks its prey. The savage killings begin with seventeen/eighteen year old Teresa Delgado. She is apprehensive of leaving her home in the evening because there are rumors that the cat is out and about, killing. Frustratingly, her mother sends her out for charcoal despite these rumors. Teresa at first tries to assuage her own fears:

“What can happen to me? This is Ciudad Real.”

But she does not reach the nearest place in time before it closes, and must go farther into the darkness, her fear building as she hears something in the shadows. When she reaches the place farther from her home, both she and the reader feel momentarily relieved. In her encounter with the man selling her the charcoal, however, we can feel Teresa’s apprehension:

“She tried to prolong the trivial little transaction all she could. Because while it lasted it spelled safety, light, another’s company. Afterwards would come darkness, fear, solitude again.”

What follows is one of the most frustrating and harrowing moments in suspense fiction — yes, in ALL suspense fiction — when we want to open a door for Teresa her stupid mother will not. It is a lesson for the blood and gore crowd — both writers and readers — that it is unneeded, because what the mind can imagine is far more horrific than any crass or explicitly described violence could ever evoke. It’s a brilliant piece of writing.

Then there is the lovely Conchita Contreras, slipping out to meet her young boy, despite warnings from her mother:

“It is hard not to be beautiful at eighteen, and for her it would have been a physical impossibility.”

But her night is fraught with peril, and she finds herself trapped, and alone, in the last place on earth she wants to be:

“Even the afterglow of the sun was gone now. Only a slight greenish blackness, like oxidized metal, above the trees in the west, showed where it had been. The rest was dark, dark, dark; night was in possession and had caught her in its trap.”

And later, as she’s pursued:

“She had no leisure to think of anything but the present moment, in the midst of all these terrors, but if she had she would have realized the darkness already had its victory. She was already a little dead. Whether she ever got out of here again or whether she didn’t she would never be the same. Fright had pushed her permanently back into some atavistic past, lived long ago.”

We then get the part-time hooker named Clo-Clo, who wants to marry at thirty-six and have a family. And finally we get young Americans Sally O’Keefe and Marjorie King, only one of whom will escape with her life. Each chapter is mesmerizing, even if it does ad an episodic quality to the narrative. Another type of mystery is slowly building as well, because Manning doesn’t believe it’s the Jaguar doing the killings. He can’t get Robles to agree with that a human being is behind the killings, however. The evidence all points to the Jaguar, but why hasn’t it been caught? Woolrich uses Manning to sway the reader, making enough arguments in favor of a real flesh and blood, two-legged animal being responsible, that we begin to wonder which it is. But then a girl survives, and Manning begs her to help him:

“But I can’t get them to listen to me. They’re as sure on their side as I am on mine. And they’re the police and I’m just—a loose guy.”

She’s having none of it at first, but finally agrees. It is also the beginning of a romance — unless she too, falls prey to whatever is out there in the darkness. Manning finds another ally, but his elaborate plan goes awry, and it is one of the most exciting, heart-stopping conclusions Woolrich ever wrote.

Is it the Jaguar? Is it a crazed killer? Is it both, or neither? Despite what you may have heard, not all of Woolrich’s tales end horribly. That’s sort of a “rookie” mistake. Is this one of those with a happy ending, or one of his novels where fate pulls everyone into its jaws and laughs? You’ll have to read it to discover the answer. Written in 1942, Black Alibi reads surprisingly fresh, as though it could have been written last week, but for a minor tweak here or there. A few may downgrade it a bit for a somewhat episodic quality to the narrative, but it’s very involving, and has an incredibly satisfying conclusion despite all the victims. I absolutely loved Black Alibi, and rank it just below my all-time favorite of his novels, Deadline at Dawn. Awesome!


THE BLACK ANGEL —

The Black Angel is a terrific example of Woolrich-style suspense. This is noir at its quintessential best. But there exists within this story something darkly romantic, even intoxicating. Beginning to read this story is like swallowing that first shot of whiskey, feeling it burn our throat as we get dizzy, and fall into a fever dream, which is how Chandler described his work.

In a sense, The Black Angel is a type of pub crawl, the female protagonist going from one name on her list to the next in order to clear the man she loves of murder. In perusing through some of the reviews for this particular title led me to wonder if we had read the same book — or whether they’d “listened” to it on audio and missed some things. Below will be a few — but not major — spoilers in order to clear up some misconceptions.

The premise is that Alberta, who loves her husband very much, discovers he has strayed. While crushed, she remains certain her husband does love her. He calls her Angel Face when they are alone, and she is convinced he has simply fallen for a predatory woman. The reader senses that she is the smarter member of the troubled couple. She recognizes what the woman is, whereas her husband cannot. Going to the woman’s apartment, Alberta discovers she’s been murdered. Fearful her husband will be blamed for the murder, she removes a book with his name in it so the police won’t find it.

This actually makes perfect sense because of the psychology Woolrich gives the reader through Alberta’s first-person narrative. One must remember this has all happened over a very short period of time. Because the husband calls the woman to speak with her while Alberta is actually inside the dead woman’s apartment, it is clear he has not committed the murder.

He is arrested despite Alberta’s best efforts, and the two have a very moving conversation through a fence in which he is not only remorseful, but convinces Alberta, and the reader, that he had already chosen Alberta, and was breaking things off. This of course, adds to the criminal case against him, but for the reader, and Alberta, it sets up the largest portion of Black Angel, which is a suspenseful search through the names in the book for the real killer.

As with many a Woolrich story, time is of the essence, as the chair awaits Kirk unless Alberta can find Mia’s killer. Emboldened by her husband’s choice, knowing they might just have a chance to put this behind them if she can get him out of this jam, she will take great risks, making for great suspense. But something happens which she hadn’t counted on, and it will haunt both Alberta and the reader at the exciting ending. No more can be revealed without spoiling this terrific novel of suspense.


THE BRIDE WORE BLACK —

In essence, The Bride Wore Black was the culmination of everything Cornell Woolrich had been building up to in the pulps. Here he completely abandoned his original dream of becoming the next Fitzgerald. The Bride Wore Black reaches for greatness, and nearly attains it. Anyone who has read it before, or has heard discussions about it, knows that the ending is flawed, a letdown of the wonderful journey the reader has taken. But like the film Apocalypse Now, that journey is so galvanizing we can’t stop reading despite what we know.

Though a fully fleshed-out novel, in The Bride Wore Black you can feel the influence of the pulps much more so than in his other big works. It moves at a pace reminiscent of the whiz-bang pulp story, only lengthened, and is mesmerizing. A girl works her way into the lives of several men, and then kills them as police try to connect the killings and make sense of it. Woolwich gives the impression she must be a tragic figure, a pretty angel avenging some dark and horrible deed the reader has yet to discover. The reader becomes sympathetic to murderer, sensing that once all is revealed, these men must have done something to deserve their fate. The reader is in a way almost rooting for her, waiting to discover what’s behind it all, so we can feel her pain and wish for some last-second reprieve where she gets away.

It is at this point, near the finish, when Woolrich pulls the rug out from under us. Reading The Bride Wore Black after decades, and not remembering how it ended, I couldn’t help feeling that Woolrich began to have doubts about the long-form, at least for this particular story, and reverted to a pulp-style ending. It might have worked in a short story, but having created so much sympathy for the avenging angel over the course of the novel, it does just the opposite. It doesn’t negate how wonderful 9/10 of the book is, but it does mar the reader’s experience.

Woolrich himself felt the work had flaws, and basically rewrote it seven or eight years later, this time with a male protagonist — and a much, much darker mood — in Rendezvous in Black. The Bride Wore Black is better known today for the 1968 film adaptation by French filmmaker Truffaut, who also changed the ending. It’s much like Apocalypse Now, in that each person must decide whether the mesmerizing journey is enough to make up for the flawed ending. Probably 4.3 stars for me, so I’ll have to go with four, but the first 9/10 is so good, that I ache to rate it higher. Definitely (as all Woolrich is) well worth reading. Be forewarned, however, that Woolrich writes much differently from modern writers, and once you’re acclimated to it, it may be difficult to return to modern dribble. Highly recommended. ( )
  Matt_Ransom | Oct 6, 2023 |
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