Thu 1 Dec 2011
LAWRENCE BLOCK – Deadly Honeymoon. Macmillan, hardcover, 1967. Paperback reprints include: Dell, 1969; Jove, 1986; Carroll & Graf, 1995. Filmed as Nightmare Honeymoon (1974).
Transplant Cornell Woolrich into a more permissive decade, and you would have this book, first published in hardcover in 1967.
A young attorney and his bride go to a remote Pennsylvania cabin for; their honeymoon, but it is interrupted by rape and murder. In this brutal but extremely suspenseful novel, a manhunt is generated by a desire for revenge with which the reader can easily identify.
ANNE CHAMBERLAIN -The Tall Dark Man. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1955. Paperback reprints include: Dell #925, 1956; Avon Classic Crime PN322, 1970; Academy Chicago, 1986.
The plot of this 1955 mystery, reprinted in an especially attractive edition, is decidedly Woolrichian. A thirteen year-old girl says she has seen a murder through the window of her Ohio school room, but no one will believe her. She also claims that the murderer saw and recognized her.
When Anthony Boucher originally reviewed this book, he paid it the extravagant praise of saying “This is purely and absolutely, The Suspense Novel, in an ideal form, which the genre rarely attains.” He did not exaggerate very much.
Vol. 8, No. 4, July-Aug 1986.
December 1st, 2011 at 4:03 pm
I’ll be on the lookout for THE TALL DARK MAN. Sounds like my kind of thing. I’d be interested in comparing this to THE WINDOW, that classic film with Bobby Driscoll.
December 1st, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Definitely two ‘to-read-books’ !
Guess the Block should be comparatively easy ,the Chamberlain pretty hard to find.
The Doc
December 1st, 2011 at 4:53 pm
There are 97 copies of the Chamberlain on ABE, Doc, and one offered by a seller in Germany. Practically next door.
December 1st, 2011 at 4:55 pm
J.F.
The resemblance of TALL DARK MAN to THE WINDOW struck me, too. I’ve had a copy of the Dell paperback for a long time, but I’ve never had the urge to read it, till now.