william irish

The Phantom Lady–Best 100 Mysteries Of All Time

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The Phantom Lady  William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) 1942 IP I know you’re all thinking, ‘oh no, not HIM again!’ but yes, Woolrich again, and again, and again, because he was that good. I was going to write a review of  I Married a Dead Man until i realized I’d written an article about selling it, … Read more

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Best 100 Mysteries of All time

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Pulp paperback version who lists Hopley as author, and then claims another Woolrich pen name as the real author.

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes—George Hopley–(Cornell Woolrich)–1948–IP

Of  the numerous novels of suspense Woolrich has written and I’ve read, The Night Has a Thousand Eyescaused the most tense and angst filled moments. The uneasy

The younger Cornell Woolrich.

reality of a Woolrich novel is the knowledge that the conclusion of the story can go either way. A relentless dark hopeless story can end miraculously, or tragically. The reader is unaware of which will prevail until nearly the last words. The journey to the conclusion can be nerve shattering in intensity. In the instance of this novel, it haunted me, and now that I’m rethinking, it still does. It’s a novel of predestination, of a lack of control over life and death, of hope that ekes along, but barely.

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Books I Almost Read

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Almost is the key word in the above title. Struggling to retrieve the joy and inspiration I acquire when reading has been tough, and tedious. I’ve opened and begun a slew of books. Some deserved to be abandoned quickly, others may have had potential that I ignored, and some were obviously quite good, and those … Read more

I Married a Dead Man–The Book I Sold Zillions Of

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I would start: Picture This! Yes, that emphatically, with exclamation point stressed, palms out, as if to stop traffic. I did. More than once. Some poor unsuspecting individual would ask the innocent question, “what would you recommend,” and that’s all  the encouragement I’d need. ‘I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille’. Lights, camera, action, … Read more