Title: The Bride Wore Black
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Genre: Pulp Mystery/Crime
Pages: 288
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Future release date for this edition: 1/5/21 (Thank you to the publisher for a free eARC via NetGalley. This in no way affects the content of the review)

I like reading Cornell Woolrich (in small doses). His plots are improbable, some of his metaphors are absurd, and his writing just isn’t up to the level of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but that man knew how to ratchet up the tension in his cheap noir potboilers.

The Bride Wore Black follows a fairly typical Woolrich plot of a group of seemingly unrelated people being killed off one by one while a police officer tries to discover and stop whatever is going on. The author’s usual steadily building suspense is definitely there, though not quite as much as in Rendezvous in Black or Night Has a Thousand Eyes. He varies how much he shows us of the planning and execution of each murder, which keeps things from becoming too repetitive (and he has a trick or two up his sleeve as well). The final explanation comes a bit out of left field (and if it weren’t for the book’s title it would be even more so), but it (mostly) makes sense and provides a satisfactory noir ending.

As far as this new edition from Otto Penzler, there’s not much to say. The only new material is a competent introduction by Eddie Muller who extolls Woolrich without getting too hero-worshippy and without major spoilers. It’s a nice uncluttered edition of a pulp classic.