The Bride Wore
Black – Cornell Woolrich
Innocently, I had picked up The Red House Mystery, a 1922 mystery by A. A. Milne. Yes, Winnie the Pooh, that A. A. Milne - Eyore should have tipped me off. After about four pages, the coziness started to smother me. To get my wind back, I did fifteen pushups, three chin-ups, ran in place five minutes and then chucked The Red House Mystery as far as I could.
Like a shot put.
And then – panting – I turned to the 1940 classic of the
suspense mystery genre The Bride Wore Black. Yee-haw! A raving beauty
shoves a guy off a high-rise ledge, blasts another guy to death, and suffocates
yet another guy inside a closet. Coolest of all, dressed as Diana the Hunting
Goddess, she zings an arrow into a guy’s chest. To summarize the plot
would do a disservice to both Woolrich the writer and prospective readers.
Suffice to say, Woolrich weaves noir magic in unemotional
prose as he builds suspense to heart-stopping points, while still developing
character and plot. The ending is a rocker.
Just read this exciting and well-crafted story! Don’t mind that the grotesque coincidences because it’s not like real life is free of them. Ditto for the relentless prose. After all, it comes out of the venerable pulp tradition. And Woolrich is considered a founder of noir, up there with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
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