The Black Curtain
The Black
Curtain
by Cornell Woolrich.
by Cornell Woolrich.
Filmed as
Street of Chance (1942), directed by Jack Hively.
First published 1941.
Published by Centipede Press.
Hardcover.
First published 1941.
Published by Centipede Press.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10:
1613471475
ISBN-13: 978-1613471470
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.