Simon at Stuck In A Book has an interesting challenge where he picks a year and then readers are encouraged to read a book published during that year. This year Simon chose 1940 and so I decided to go with The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich which has been gathering dust in my kindle for some time now.
The Bride Wore Black begins in the 1930's and in the prologue we meet a young woman named Julie who has suffered a tragedy of some kind that we are not told about. Julie lets her family know that she needs to get away and sort things out and so she boards a train to Chicago. But Julie gets off the train at the next stop and remains in NYC. Her family is unaware of this.
The novel then switches to a different scene in which a wealthy young man named Bliss is celebrating at his engagement party. A beautiful mysterious woman shows up at the party and is able to get Bliss alone on the balcony of the high rise where the party is taking place. She pushes him off the balcony to his death. The young woman leaves the party before any of the guests find out what has happened.
It's the beginning of a killing spree that will span over two years in which four men turn up dead in NYC and always a young woman is reported as having been around the scene at the time. But who is this woman and who are these men since they don't appear to have known each other and have led very different lives? There is Bliss, the wealthy young man who is engaged. There is Mitchell who is down on his luck and living in a dingy apartment. Moran a businessman with a wife and young son and Ferguson a successful artist.
A detective named Wagner is assigned to the case and he is pretty sure that the same woman is responsible for all of these killings. His supervisors are not so sure since witnesses describe the woman at each crime scene in different ways but Wagner knows its not hard to change one's appearance after each killing. Wagner is sure that somehow these four men must have been connected in the past. Some event must have happened involving all four and once he finds out what that event was it will lead him to the killer.
The Bride Wore Black is a gripping novel but disturbing and I had a problem with the ending which I can't go into without revealing too much. But now having read a prior short story by Cornell Woolrich and The Bride Wore Black I plan to continue with this writer.
Crime noir novelists like Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, Dorothy Hughes, Chester Himes etc were popular in their day. They wrote in a similar vein about betrayal, bad breaks, alienation, guilt and settling scores. And though a steady diet of their books is probably a mistake, I do plan to read more by these authors. They are talented and had important things to say about life and I am glad to see that their novels are having a revival.
Later - I did it! I finally figured out how to paste the cover of the book I am reviewing onto my blog! Now the trick is to remember how I did this when I post my next review.
