Cornell Woolrich~SILENT AS THE GRAVE~Centipede Press~2026 For Sale

Edition information Introduction by Curtis Evans. UnNumbered & UnSigned copy. Sewn binding, rounded back, ribbon marker, head and tailbands, printed endpapers, top-edge stain, and other extras. 5⅝ × 9 inches- 528 pages. ISBN 978-1-61347-377-1.

Synopsis Haunted by the grim specters of “mass poverty, violentextremism and world war,” the decade of the 1930s has justly been dubbed the“age of anxiety.” And if this anxious age had its own agitated bard, surely itwas crime writer Cornell Woolrich. During the depressed Thirties and into thedesperate, war-torn Forties, the agoraphobic and anemic Woolrich, from hissocially isolated New York apartment, channeled his own relentlessly creepinganxieties into a torrent of unforgettable crime fiction, both in its longer andshorter forms. Silent As The Grave, the latest volume of Woolrich’s short pulpcrime writing, collects fourteen grimly gripping tales, along with the author’sevocative autobiographical essay “Even God Felt the Depression.” You will findyour own anxiety steadily mounting as you read such grave crime tales as “DimeA Dance,” a.k.a. “The Dancing Detective,” where a mad serial killer isdetermined to keep a date for a deadly danse macabre with a taxi dancer tryingto discover the identity of her friend’s slayer; “Two Fellows in a FurnishedRoom,” where the fast friendship of two roommates is tested by the feral murderof a woman; “You’ll Never See Me Again,” where a young bride tearfully vows togo “home to mother” and promptly vanishes without a trace; “Murder at theAutomat,” where a man is mysteriously dispatched at an automated restaurant bymeans of a poisoned bologna sandwich; “Bequest,” where a desperate guy on thelam finds to his horror that bad as things are, they can always get worse;“Collared,” where a mauled moll plots her resourceful revenge; “Fountain Pen,”where some crooks learn that the pen is much deadlier than the sword; and“Silent As the Grave,” where a loyal wife’s vow of silence to her husband is underminedby a nagging conscience that just won’t keep quiet.