Cornell Woolrich es aclamado como el escritor preeminente del siglo XX en el género de la ficción de puro suspense. Sus narrativas se sumergen en las vidas oscuras y emocionalmente atormentadas de los personajes, creando magistralmente tensión y atmósfera. Tras encontrar inicialmente reconocimiento por novelas convencionales, Woolrich descubrió su voz característica en la ficción criminal, produciendo una obra prolífica a menudo publicada bajo diversos seudónimos. Su legado perdura a través de una donación establecida para apoyar a jóvenes escritores aspirantes.
Los relatos No quisiera estar en sus zapatos y Fue anoche ratifican a William Irish como precursor del suspense, ya que introdujo esta nueva vía en la novela negra, en la que exprime una atmósfera sobrecogedora apresando fatalmente a sus personajes. El universo del escritor desata los miedos atávicos, no sólo de los protagonistas de sus obras, sino en las almas de los lectores. Nada es superfluo ni gratuito.
Estos dos apasionantes relatos policíacos demuestran la maestría de Cornell Woolrich en el manejo del suspense y la intriga. En El ojo de cristal, un muchacho ingenioso y valiente sigue el rastro de un asesino, mientras que en Charlie saldrá esta noche un capitán de policía presiente que su propio hijo es un peligroso atracador.
The story that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock film masterpiece! Cornell Woolrich. His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.
Novels by Doyle, Maugham, Charteris, MacDonald, Gardner, Woolrick, and Fleming deal with spies and secret agents in World Wars I and II and the cold war
A Centenary Collection of Stories
Cornell Woolrich published his first novel in 1926, and throughout the next four decades his fiction riveted the reading public with unparalleled mystery, suspense, and horror. America's most popular pulp magazines published hundreds of his stories. Classic films like Hitchcock's Rear Window, Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black, and Tournier's Black Alibi came chillingly to the screen from his work. And novels like Deadline at Dawn, Rendezvous in Black, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes gained him the epithet "father of noir." Now with this new centenary volume of previously uncollected suspense fiction edited by Francis M. Nevins--recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for criticism in the mystery field--a whole new generation of mystery readers, as well as his countless fans who have long loved his work, can thrill to the achievement of Cornell Woolrich, the writer deemed to be the Edgar Allan Poe of the twentieth century.
What if you woke up to discover everyone thought you were somebody else? Pregnant and abandoned, all Helen Georgesson has is five dollars and a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Then she is involved in a train crash, and regains consciousness only to discover that she has given birth - and, in a bizarre twist of fate, has been mistaken for somebody else. Helen decides to claim this opportunity to make a new life for herself and her son. But eventually her past will catch up with her, in terrible ways...
A police detective seeks the rationale between seemingly-unrelated murders, connected only by the appearance of a beautiful woman each time When the wealthy ladies’ man fell from his balcony in the midst of his engagement party, the police dismissed the death as the result of a freak accident. There was nothing to connect it with the poisoning of a lonely man in his squalid apartment, or with the married business-man killed after him, sealed into a closet and left to suffocate. No connection, that is, aside from the appearance of a beautiful woman in each case, just before the victims met their untimely ends. Nobody knows her identity, where she comes from or whither she goes. Nor do they know why anyone would be targeting this series of seemingly-unrelated persons. But one police detective is convinced that the answers to these questions can save the lives of men who might be next on the list, men who will continue to die at a rapid rate unless he can solve the puzzle and intervene. Cornell Woolrich’s first crime novel, The Bride Wore Black is the stylish, tense thriller that launched the career of “the supreme master of suspense” (New York Times). It was filmed by Francois Truffaut under the same title, and went on to inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies.
On a mild midwestern night in the early 1940s, Johnny Marr leans against a drugstore wall. He’s waiting for Dorothy, his fiancée, and tonight is the last night they’ll be meeting here, for it’s May 31st, and June 1st marks their wedding day. But she’s late, and Johnny soon learns of a horrible accident—an accident involving a group of drunken men, a low-flying charter plane, and an empty liquor bottle. In one short moment Johnny loses all that matters to him and his life is shattered. He vows to take from these men exactly what they took from him. After years of planning, Johnny begins his quest for revenge, and on May 31st of each year—always on May 31st—wives, lovers, and daughters are suddenly no longer safe.
