The Black Curtain [Paperback]

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 recognise 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 Curtainis the second of Cornell Woolrich’s celebrated “black” books, followingThe Bride Wore Black, which established his reputation as America’s greatest noir writer. It was adapted into film as the classicStreet of Chance, starring Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor.Born George Hopley-Woolrich,Cornell Woolrich(1903–1968) is the pen name most often employed by one of America's best crime and noir writers, whose other pseudonyms included George Hopley and William Irish, the moniker under whichWaltz into Darknesswas first published. His novels were among the first to employ the atmosphere, outlook, and impending sense of doom that came to be characterized as noir, and inspired some of the most famous films of the period, including Alfred Hitchcock'sRear Window, Francois Truffaut'sThe Bride Wore Black,The Phantom Lady, and celebrated B-movies such asThe Leopard ManandBlack Angel.

George Pelecanosis the autl3g