Saturday, July 25, 2026

The Black Quintet: My Favorites of Cornell Woolrich's Crime and Weird Novels--What are Yours?

In the two decades between 1940 and 1960 Cornell Woolrich published 16 crime or weird novels, with the quality great tapering off, by common consensus, in the second decade.  These are:

The Bride Wore Black 1940

The Black Curtain 1941

Black Alibi 1942

Phantom Lady 1942 as William Irish

The Black Angel 1943

The Black Path of Fear 1944

Deadline at Dawn 1944 as William Irish

Night Has a Thousand Eyes 1945 as George Hopley

Waltz into Darkness 1947 as William Irish

Rendezvous in Black 1948

I Married a Dead Man 1948 as William Irish

Savage Bride 1950

Fright 1950 as George Hopley

Strangler's Serenade 1951

Death Is My Dancing Partner 1959

The Doom Stone 1960 (episodic novel)

What are your favorites?  I know it's unoriginal, but I still go with The Bride Wore Black as my favorite, it's just such a fine, hard crystalline sacrificial dagger of a book.  

I need to reread it, but I think the fantastical, fatalistic Night Has a Thousand Eyes runs it close.  For tensity I've always loved the "vanished woman" case Phantom Lady and the serial killer novel Black Alibi, which is, I think, the scariest novel he ever wrote.  I think I'll round my personal list out with Deadline at Dawn, though Waltz into Darkness is quite interesting.  I'm one of those people whom the ending of I Married a Dead Man really bugged the hell out of!  

Let me know yours, I'd like to collect some data on this.  

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