The six novels of Cornell Woolrich’s famous Black Series—The Bride Wore Black (1940), The Black Curtain (1941), Black Alibi (1942), The Black Angel (1943), The Black Path of Fear (1944) and Rendezvous in Black (1948)—are the pinnacle of the era’s noir crime fiction writing. At a time when the world was embroiled in war, crime fiction like Woolrich’s provided an escape from the horrors of the real world into horrors of a more artistic kind. As such, Woolrich carefully crafted each of these novels to instill a deep and overwhelming sense of dread in both his characters and in the reader. Fear of the dark, fear of unseen forces, and fear of forces outside one’s control dominate these nail-biting suspense thrillers for which the author is so well known.
Volume II of the Black Series features the male protagonists of The Black Curtain, The Black Path of Fear and Rendezvous in Black. The Black Curtain tells of a man who returns home after an accident only to discover that he’s been accused of murder. The only problem is, he doesn’t remember the last three years of his life. On the run from American gangsters in The Black Path of Fear, a man who eloped with one of the gangsters’ wives to Havana is now being framed for the woman’s murder. Rendezvous in Black, Woolrich’s final novel of the series, mirrors The Bride Wore Black with a male protagonist who, every night on the same year, takes revenge on anyone in his path for the accident that killed his bride-to-be.
