Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1144179 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Psychologically acute and suspenseful roman noir
Cornel Woolrich's WALTZ INTO DARKNESS has twice been made into films--Truffaut's MISSISSIPPI MERMAID with Catherine Deneuve, and ORIGINAL SIN with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie--, but neither film captured the original novel's quirky and queasy masochistic appeal or its suspenseful drive. Neither film also retained the 1880s Gold Coast setting for Woolrich's novel which is also part of its peculiar charm. A wealthy New Orleans merchant initiates a lonely-hearts correspondence with a St. Louis spinster. When she arrives in his city by riverboat to marry him, she is much more beautiful and attractive then he ever imagined. But during their marriage's early days she displays all kinds of discrepancies--and mysteries--regarding her behavior, and when he allows her to withdraw money from his bank account, she disappears the next day with all his liquid assets. This is just the beginning of Woolrich's extremely psychologically acute rendition of the odd link that joins a con artist and her victim. The novel suffers a bit from the hero's dull-wittedness (the reader figures out the cons the merchant falls for pages and pages before he suspects a thing, even right to the end), but the novel is one of Woolrich's very best. Like many of his books, it would make the terrific basis for an opera.

The ultimate in suspense.
Waltz into Darkness transports us to a time long ago, to the year 1880. Louis Durand is a wealthy but lonely New Orleans bachelor who, early in the narrative, marries a comely young woman named Julia Russell. But Louis and Julia are essentially strangers to each other. Their courtship, such as it was, has taken place entirely by mail. The first days of their marriage are quite blissful. But then author Cornell Woolrich masterfully introduces ever increasingly unsubtle hints that Julia is other than she presents herself to be. By the time Louis realizes he has made a terrible mistake in taking Julia as his wife, it's too late. In the blink of an eye, he is removed from, what is to him, paradise and thrust into a hellish nightmare. And that's just the beginning. There's much, much more.

Waltz into Darkness is written as a third person narration. By using an arcane sounding, flowery prose and incorporating a number of melodramatic embellishments, Woolrich expertly recreates the kind of writing one would expect to find in a Victorian era romance novel. And his use of the element of suspense is no less than magnificent. Time and time again he brings the reader right up to the heart pounding brink only to then pull back so the suspense can build once more.

This book is superbly crafted and shows what a virtuoso novelist Cornell Woolrich was. Highly recommended.

Romantic Obsession
I've read a good deal of Woolrich over the years, especially many of his short stories. Waltz into Darkness is quintessential Woolrich. Woolrich's stories have been a staple for so many film noirs and this novel typifies one of the most familiar noir motifs - how a basically decent man can be destroyed because of his obsession for an amoral woman. Woolrich's personal life sorely lacked any romantic connection and this yearning for that physical and emotional connection is embodied in the character of Louis Durand. Nowhere is all of Woolrich's literature is the romance of loneliness, despair, and fatalism so richly explored than here.