Recommended reading - The Black Curtain (1941):

The Black Curtain

By Cornell Woolrich.

Filmed as Street of Chance (1942), directed by Jack Hively.

First published 1941.

Published by Centipede Press.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 1613471475

ISBN-13: 978-1613471470

Description:

A man is accused of a murder he cannot remember…

In a nightmare scenario, Frank Townsend has an apparently minor accident on his way home but he arrives to find his wife gone and doesn’t recognize his apartment. He had gone to work on a normal day but didn’t return for more than three years. Suffering from amnesia, he has to rediscover who he is, where he has been, and what he has done. A curtain has fallen to cut off all memories of his life.

First among the memories he wants to recover is whether he has committed the murder of which he has been accused. A mysterious stranger with a gun has been following him while he attempts to simultaneously understand what has happened in his past while doing all he can to extricate himself from a seemingly hopeless situation and regain his reputation. He does not yet know that he is in great jeopardy and there is no one he can trust to rescue him from the abyss.

The Black Curtain is the second of Cornell Woolrich’s celebrated “black” books, following The Bride Wore Black, which established his reputation as America’s greatest noir writer. It was adapted into film as the classic Street of Chance, starring Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor.

Recommended reading - Nightwebs (1971):

Nightwebs

By Cornell Woolrich.

Short story anthology.

Includes the short story The Corpse Next Door, filmed as Union City (1980), directed by Mark Reichert.

Paperback.

Published Orion Books.

First published 1971.

ISBN 13: 9780752851709

ISBN 10: 0752851705

ASIN: 0752851705

Description:

“Possibly the finest mystery writer of the twentieth century.” – The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection.

Cornell Woolrich was a haunted man who lived a life of reclusive misery, but he was also a uniquely gifted writer who explored the classic noir themes of loneliness, despair and futility. His stories are masterpieces of psychological suspense and mystery, and they have inspired classic movies like Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride wore Black. This collection brings together twelve of his finest, most powerful and disturbing tales.

Contents: Graves for the Living; The Red Tide; The Corpse Next Door; You'll Never See Me Again; Dusk to Dawn; Murder at the Automat; Death in the Air; Mamie 'n' Me; The Screaming Laugh; One and a Half Murders; Dead on Her Feet; One Night in Barcelona; The Penny-a-Worder; The Number's Up; Too Nice a Day to Die; Life is Weird Sometimes.

Born on this day – Cornell Woolrich:

Cornell Woolrich

Writer

December 4, 1903 – September 25, 1968

Credits:

Cover Charge (1926); Children of the Ritz (1927); Times Square (1929); A Young Man's Heart (1930); The Time of Her Life (1931);  Manhattan Love Song (1932); The Bride Wore Black (aka Beware the Lady) (1940); The Black Curtain (1941); The Black Alibi (1942); Phantom Lady (1942); The Black Angel (1943); The Black Path of Fear (1944); Deadline at Dawn (1944); Night has a Thousand Eyes (1945); Waltz into Darkness (1947); I Married a Dead Man (1948); Rendezvous in Black (1948); Fright (1950); Savage Bride (1950); Marihuana (1951); Strangler's Serenade (1951); You'll Never See Me Again (1951); Hotel Room (1958); Death is my Dancing Partner (1959); The Doom Stone (1960); Into the Night (1987); Nightmare (1956); Violence (1958); Beyond the Night (1959); The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich (1965); The Dark Side of Love (1965); Nightwebs (1971); Angels of Darkness (1978); The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich (1981); Four by Cornell Woolrich (1983); Rear Window (1984); Vampire's Honeymoon (1985); Blind Date With Death (1985); Darkness at Dawn (1985); Night and Fear (2003); Tonight Somewhere in New York (2005); Love and Night (2011); Death in the Air (2020); Senor Flatfoot (2020); All at Once, No Alice (2020); The Drugstore Cowboy (2020); Hot Water (2020); Dilemma of the Dead Lady (2020); The Cornell Woolrich Omnibus (1998); Four Novellas of Fear (2010); Speak to Me of Death (1935); The Screaming Laugh (1938); Through a Dead Man's Eye (1939); Somebody's Clothes-Somebody's Life (1958).