Cornell Woolrich - The Black Curtain

The legendary crime fiction editor Otto Penzler has made the works of classic noir author Cornell Woolrich widely available at very affordable prices. One of these is The Black Curtain, a novel that starts off intriguing but soon turns into one of Woolrich's more stretched and logically questionable narratives.

The story follows a man named Frank Townsend, who suddenly regains consciousness in the middle of the street, only to realize he’s been suffering from amnesia for the past year. He has no memory of what happened during that time. Strangely enough, he returns to his wife and old job as if nothing ever happened — and here’s where the logical cracks begin to show.

Questions pile up: Why was his wife still waiting for him after a full year of unexplained absence? How did he just slide back into his job? I expected some kind of psychological help or a psychiatrist to step in — but that never happens.

Instead, we get a mysterious man tailing Townsend around the city. After a narrow escape and a break-in at his apartment, he and his wife flee. Townsend tells her to go to her mother while he tries to figure out what the hell happened during his “lost year.”

He ends up in a small town, hoping someone will recognize him. Eventually, a young woman named Ruth does. Through conversations with her, he learns — from a newspaper article — that during his amnesiac period he was apparently involved in a murder. A man was killed in the house where he worked under a different name. Ruth urges him to run, but he insists on proving his innocence.

They return to the house, where Ruth now works as a caretaker for the paralyzed grandfather of the murdered man. Also living there is a sick girl who never leaves her room. Townsend, now going by "Dan," hides in a storage room.

To keep things short: the widow of the murdered man, along with her brother, plan to set a trap and frame Dan and Ruth for a fake break-in gone wrong — a self-defense killing. The brother sends the widow to the police station to "report" the break-in in advance, planning to kill them before she returns.

But in a twist of poetic justice, the paralyzed grandfather, upon overhearing the plan, sets a fire. The smoke disables the would-be killer, police arrive just in time, and Townsend is saved. Tragically, Ruth is killed in the struggle. The widow is arrested, and in the end, Townsend returns to his wife.

Despite its many plot holes and coincidences, The Black Curtain is still a compelling read. It’s full of Woolrich’s signature mood: paranoia, dread, and dreamlike uncertainty. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like the author was working through his own issues — perhaps even alcohol-induced blackouts — and pouring them into the narrative.

It’s not his tightest work, but it’s classic Woolrich: messy, emotional, suspenseful, and strangely unforgettable. It was adapted into film noir Street Of Chance (1942) like many of Woolrich novels.