Doing Woolrich little justice

LAST year’s collection “Night and Fear,� published to commemorate the centenary of Cornell Woolrich’s birth, used 20 of the novelist and crime writer’s lesser-known short stories to remind us of his prodigious talent. Since it accomplished that goal admirably, editor Francis M. Nevins’ latest trip to Woolrich’s dusty trunk may strike some as unnecessary, not to mention unrewarding.

The new collection Nevins has assembled, “Tonight, Somewhere in New York,� is mainly a grab bag of short stories, bits and pieces from an incomplete novel of the same name, and two chapters from Woolrich’s previously published memoir, “Blues of a Lifetime.�

The stories were written or reworked during the author’s last 20 years -- a period he spent mainly in the seclusion of hotel rooms, caring for his infirm mother and, after her death, not taking terribly good care of himself. By then, Nevins tells us, Woolrich had published 11 novels and more than 200 stories “of pure suspense that earned him his reputation as the Hitchcock of the written word.� Their continued reuse by Hitchcock (whose film “Rear Window� was based on a Woolrich short story) and others meant that his financial needs were being met and he could slow his creative output.

Judged by the offerings here, what Woolrich did produce in the period leading up to his death in 1968 is of only moderate interest. “The Night of February 17, 1924� is a section from his 1958 episodic novel “Hotel Room,� in which, anticipating the travails of Tony Soprano, the writer shows us a Capone-like mob boss in all his brutish arrogance, then breaks him down, with the lug’s tough, embittered mother taking the first shots.

“The Number Is Up,� which Nevins suspects may have been an unused chapter intended for “Hotel Room,� focuses on a young couple facing torture and death. It’s a particularly ugly shocker with a gimmick that Nevins points out was used in Steven Spielberg’s futuristic film noir “Minority Report,� based on a story by Woolrich contemporary Philip K. Dick.

“Too Nice a Day to Die� and “Intent to Kill� begin with their protagonists determined to commit a crime. In “Too Nice a Day,� a depressed young woman has decided to kill herself; in “Intent to Kill,� a returning, psychotic Vietnam vet (whom Nevins thinks may be “the first of his kind in fiction�) is set on murdering his unfaithful wife. Both eventually change their minds, but at that period in his own life, Woolrich apparently was in no mood to write happy endings.

“Murder, Obliquely,� one of Woolrich’s pulp stories that he refurbished and sold as new in the 1950s, is told from the point of view of a Manhattan socialite in love with a man perfect in every way except that he’s in love with another woman. This dark tale of obsessive love and its consequences and his Paris-based tale “Mannequin,� narrated by a runway model harboring her escaped convict-lover, are examples of the author’s twisted take on the old Hollywood formula: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy or girl dies.

The unfinished novel, a tale of love, murder and loss is the book’s least satisfactory element. (Some of its sections were published as stories in magazines.) There is enough intrigue in the hapless narrator’s opening ruminations to hook any noir fan. The character’s flashback to meeting the love of his life is yarn-spinning at its best. Then we hit a missing chapter. And another. Nevins tries to fill in the blanks as best he can, but too many key elements are missing to justify its publication for general readers.

The collection’s two chapters from “Blues for a Lifetime� are considerably more effective as individual tales. Though Woolrich labeled them autobiography, Nevins writes that “the vast majority of the things he said or wrote elsewhere about his life have turned out to be false.� These mixtures of memoir and fantasy -- “The Poor Girl,� in which young Cornell takes his first love to a society party with tragic results, and “Even God Felt the Depression,� in which the struggling author writes of trying to survive on his own without his family’s help -- show some skill and emotional range. But, like most of this collection, they fall short of the dark and disturbing noir fiction for which Woolrich should be remembered.

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Dick Lochte, author of the suspense thriller “Sleeping Dog,� is a frequent contributor to Book Review.