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.