Kudos to the American Mystery Classics series for making this top-notch noir available to a new audience. The ending, with its devastating revelation of what’s behind the homicides, is as bleak as anything Woolrich ever wrote. Julie dispatches a second man by poisoning and manages to stay one step ahead of the law as she murders other victims. Then she pushes him off the terrace to his death and disappears, leaving the police baffled as to her identity and motive. Part of Otto Penzlers excellent American Mystery Classics series.
It stars Jeanne Moreau, Charles Denner, Alexandra Stewart, Michel Bouquet, Michael Lonsdale, Claude Rich and Jean-Claude. Out on the apartment’s terrace, Julie tells Bliss that, though he doesn’t recognize her, he’d seen her once before, when he was in a car with four other men. The Bride Wore Black ( French: La Marie tait en noir) is a 1968 French film directed by Franois Truffaut and based on the novel of the same name by William Irish, a pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich. After renting a room under an assumed name, she cases the apartment house of well-to-do Ken Bliss, whose engagement party she later crashes. Dustjacket flaps are machine-clipped and unpriced (apparently as issued), lightly shelfworn, with a few small stains on verso, a small chip at crown, and several short tears - a few of them tape-mended on verso an unrestored, Very Good+ example.At the start of this somber crime novel from Woolrich (1903–1968), originally published in 1940, a woman named Julie buys a one-way ticket to Chicago at New York’s Grand Central Station, but she gets off at the first stop, still in Manhattan. Spine ends gently nudged, light wear to extremities, with lower rear board corner gently tapped (though still sharp) a fresh, Near Fine copy, without the usual heavy discoloration to cloth, and with the gilt still quite bright. Octavo (21cm) royal blue cloth, with titling and decorative elements stamped in gilt on spine and front cover navy blue topstain dustjacket viii,3-312pp. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone title, and basis for François Truffaut's 1968 film of the same name, starring Jeanne Moreau as the avenging Bride.
"Julie Killeen's husband is killed on the church steps moments after their marriage and in a ritual substitution of deathmaking for lovemaking, she devotes the rest of her life to tracking down and systematically murdering the drunk driver and his four cronies whom she holds responsible" (Pronzini & Muller, p.860). The author's first full-length work of crime fiction, the first of his "Black" novels, and his first deep foray into the revenge narrative he would craft so expertly throughout his career.
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