*WOMEN IN NOIR* is a three-volume collection that features some of the famed crime and suspense writer Cornell Woolrich’s most exciting short fiction. These 22 stories are exceptional for the sole reason that they feature and center women, whether as the protagonist or the narrator herself, something not often seen done by Woolrich’s contemporaries. Lurking between the lines of these stories is one still more fascinating – that of Woolrich’s doomed partnerships with women and the tortured love/hate relationship with his mother. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, you’ll find within these volumes some of the most unique and dynamic female characters ever conceived in the crime and suspense genres, many of whom haven’t been given life on the printed page in decades.
*Lover’s Lament* drips with love and pain, two sides of the same coin for Woolrich. In tangling his protagonists’ lives up with those of their lovers, he explores the position women are put in, by choice or otherwise, when crime or the treacherous hand of fate are involved. Nothing is ever sunshine and roses with Woolrich, and these seven dark tales are no exception:
-Cinderella Magic
-The Red Tide
-The Death Stone
-Death Escapes the Eye
-Too Nice a Day to Die
-Mannequin
-For the Rest of Her Life
Two other volumes of *WOMEN IN NOIR* are available: *Dangerous Dames* and *Sleuths & Sages* *.*
Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (1903–1968) is one of America’s best crime and suspense writers, and sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish or George Hopley. He invented and mastered the genre of pulp-fiction and wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and full-length novels. One of his most famous stories was “It Had to be Murder,” which was adapted into the classic Alfred Hitchcock film *Rear Window* in 1954.