Catching up on recent stuff...

OK, I haven't been a very good correspondent. I'm trying to get caught up now and here's a few things I've read lately....

The second volume of her Henry and Emmy Tibbett series, Down Among the Dead Men is a solid if unremarkable mystery novel. Henry and Emmy are on holiday again, visiting some friends for a sailing vacation in the seaside hamlet of Berrybridge Haven. They get involved with the local weekend sailing community, get to know the locals, and hear a tale of a somewhat mysterious death that happened some time ago. But then there's some tensions, some strangeness, and another murder. Who did it, and why? It all wraps up nicely, if a bit sadly; it's a tale of a somewhat minor crime that snowballed into some bigger ones. It's a pleasant read, with well-drawn characters, a good plot, and a setting that reminded me of some of the waterside towns on the Chesapeake that I've visited. You can always count on Patricia Moyes.

Now THIS is a classic. Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black is simply amazing. A beautiful woman works her way into the lives of a series of men, and kills them all in various ways. It's sheer noir delerium, one of the great examples of dark pulp noir fiction out there. It inspired a Francois Truffaut film, starring Jeanne Moreau...but if you like the movie, prepare yourself, because the movie makes a substantial change to the story, changing the nature of the crime that started her spree, and a devastating final twist is cut that changed everything. I had read the novel first and found the movie disappointing....but I have friends who saw the movie first and found the book a disappointment, so your actual mileage may vary. I find the book superior and I'm glad I've managed to hang on to it all these years....I first read it as a high-school student back in the 80s, and I was pleasantly surprised to see I still had it when I moved.

Michael Rowe's Wild Fell was simply infuriating for me. Parts of it are excellent, as it describes the narrator's boyhood and experiences that led to him buying an old house on an island on a lake in Canada. It goes fairly leisurely for a while, but I didn't mind, as there were hints of menace in the story and in a prelude about the house...but then in the last chapter everything seems cranked up to 11 and revelations come so rapidly that it's hard to keep track, and it's unclear if we're supposed to take them as literal truth or just lies. It reads as if the author had come to his page limit and had to wrap everything up in a hurry. If it had simply been bad, I could have wiped my hands and walked away, but in this case, Rowe has genuine grace as a stylist...but I felt his plotting needed work. A lot of work.

So, that brings me a few steps closer to being up to date...more to come....

I MARRIED A DEAD MAN by Cornell Woolrich

But wait, I hear you cry. That picture says "William Irish"! Well, yeah. That was a pseudonym used by prolific pulp author Cornell Woolrich; when it's reprinted today (which is rare, for some reason), it's credited to Woolrich. (That's an old cover above; the version I have is much less interesting artistically.)

It's the 1940s. (The book was published in 1948, and no other time is given.) Helen is eight months pregnant, unmarried, and has been cast aside by her paramour, who has simply sent her a train ticket back to her hometown of San Francisco, and a five-dollar bill. Depressed and miserable, with nothing to live for, she is temporarily cheered on the train trip by meeting young married couple Patrice and Hugh Hazzard, who are on their way to meet his parents. Patrice is pregnant as well, almost as far gone as Helen. And she learns that Hugh's family has never met Patrice, and doesn't even know what she looks like.

Naturally, it happens. Patrice and Helen are in the washroom together. Patrice complains of her loose wedding band, and asks Helen to hold it for her. Helen puts it on her finger to keep it safe....and the train is in a horrible accident.

Helen gives birth in the wreckage, passes out, and wakes up in the hospital...and discovers she's been mistaken for Patrice. The Hazzards are dead, and the REAL Patrice was mistaken for Helen. Her first instinct is to set the record straight...but nobody takes her seriously, then she finds out the Hazzards are incredibly wealthy, and thinks of how they would provide for her child much better than she ever could. So she goes along with it, slowly adjusting herself to her new lifestyle and happily caring for her child.

Until one day, an envelope arrives in the mail. Inside, the letter has a single sentence. "Who are you?"

Really, if you think I've given away a lot, I haven't. This is the basic setup, and what follows is a dark and twisted tale of secrets, lies, blackmail, and murder.

If this sounds like film noir, or Hitchcock, you wouldn't be far off the mark. Countless classic films have been made from Woolrich's works. Rear Window. Phantom Lady. The Bride Wore Black. The Leopard Man. Night Has a Thousand Eyes. The Window. Mississippi Mermaid. Original Sin. Many more. And this novel was filmed in 1950 as No Man of Her Own, with Barbara Stanwyck. It's said that more films noir were based on his work than any other crime writer, and it's fitting. His style is spare but cinematic, lending itself well to dramatic interpretation.

But land sakes, it's DARK. I'm not giving anything away when I say it ends on a dark and despairing note, as it begins with that and the story is told in flashback. This is that dark, cynical universe where the bad guys might get theirs but the good guys may get screwed over in the process. After reading this I need a nice cozy ghost story to brighten my mood. Supernatural terrors are one thing, but man's inhumanity to man, and the cruelties of fate, are something else, and much worse.

Woolrich can be hard to find; much of his work is out of print (estate issues, saith Wikipedia), but every now and then you can find something in your local friendly used-book emporium. Once I even found a hardcover collection, "The Best of William Irish", that had PHANTOM LADY, DEADLINE AT DAWN, and an assortment of stories, and no mention of the Woolrich name. But keep your eyes open, you might find something. And note the titles of the movies based on his work; even when diluted for the screen, they're an experience. (And boy, was The Bride Wore Black diluted, robbed of a brutal, ironic twist at the end...)