A new selection of the best short stories - including the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film Rear Window - from Cornell Woolrich, one of the twistiest, smartest and most thrilling crime writers of the 20th centuryHere an injured, housebound man believes he might have witnessed a murder and must uncover the plot without leaving his apartment. An accidental killer hides the corpse of his neighbour in a fold-down bed - just as his landlord decides to sta...

Regarded by some as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction, Cornell Woolrich began his career in the 1920s, writing mainstream novels and winning comparisons with F. Scott Fitzgerald. His best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing in pulp magazines and paperback novels. He produced numerous noir classics, many of which were turned into films, including ‘Rear Window’, ‘The Bride Wore Black’, ‘The Night Has a Thousand ...

To Death! Three stories of suspense and murder, fall guys and frames, and good women and bad.The Fatal Footlights (1950)Match wits with Police-Dick Benson as he tries to trap the brazen murderer who killed golden Gilda before his eyes—on a burlesque runway.Chapter One – Curtains for the CutieChapter Two – Vanishing BottleChapter Three – Brazen KillerChapter Four – An Eye for an EyeChapter Five – The L...

Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and desperate, Helen boards a train heading west. She meets Patrice, a happy young expectant mother who’s traveling with her husband, Hugh, to meet his family for the first time. Patrice lets Helen try on her wedding-band—just before the train crashes, killing Patrice and Hugh. Thinking Helen is their widowed daughter-in-law, Hugh’s family welcomes her into their rich and loving home. For the first time, Helen’s life is good—until her ex-lover comes to tow...

Although “The Drugstore Cowboy” (published in 1927 and unrelateld to the movie of the same name) has some crime elements, including a stolen car and a high-speed police chase, it is primarily a Jazz Age tale. Filmed, it would have made a terrific screwball comedy in the right director’s hands—imagine young actors Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in the starring roles as you read. If you are a fan of Woolrich's mysteries, this is a worthy addition to his oeuvre, showcases elements he would ...

A film star with a predilection for gambling incognito south of the border gives her Private-Eye bodyguard more than a handful of trouble when she takes an unscheduled trip to a Mexican Casino.

"REAL NOIR... A GROTESQUELY MEMORABLE RIDE." - WALL STREET JOURNALTWO OF THE GREATEST AUTHORS OF NOIR FICTION IN AN UNFORGETTABLE COLLABORATION.An innocent woman lies dead in the street, felled by a stray bullet. Now it's up to the woman who killed her to investigate the dead woman's life and pick up its cut-short threads, carrying out a mission of vengeance on her behalf against the man she loved and lost – and the nightclub-singing femme ...

'This new series makes available again, in some cases for the first time in nearly a century, the best crime fiction you've never heard of.' A J FinnIn this collection of mysteries, the greatest detectives of the Golden Age investigate the most puzzling crimes of the era.The investigators in these stories are from all walks of life – retired magicians to schoolteachers, Broadway producers to nuns. Whether professional or amateur, these keen...

The Bride Wore Black (1940) is one of Cornell Woolrich's defining exercises in noir suspense: a fatalistic revenge narrative in which a widowed bride methodically pursues the men she believes destroyed her wedding-day happiness. Structured as a series of elegant, tightening set pieces, the novel turns murder into ritual, replacing detective explanation with dread, misdirection, and psychological pressure. Its clipped prose, urban shadows, and sense of doom place it at the center of America...

Explosive and devious is the course of Latin-American politics—but not without fascination. Today's lesson includes a general with a failing for wristwatches; another general who added one and one to get approximately five; a non-com who preferred Marx to local history; and a girl who should have been labeled TNT--preface.

A man is first accused, and then convicted, of murdering his wife. As his execution date approaches, his friends and a sympathetic detective frantically search for his alibi, a woman with whom he’d gone to a Broadway show the night of the murder. None of the people who saw them together recall the woman....

Fourteen impossible mysteries from the masters of the Golden Age detective story.‘Lock your door and enjoy’ – KirkusLocked-room mysteries have baffled and delighted readers for generations. They present the reader with a seemingly impossible crime – a body found inside a windowless room that’s been locked from the inside, for example – before revealing an ingenious and satisfying solution.This unique collection features fou...