FORGOTTEN BOOK: FRIGHT

 Fright by "George Hopley" (Cornell George Hopley Woolrich) (1950; reprinted as by Cornell Woolrich, 2007)

Cornell Woolrich was a master of claustrophobic suspense, either under his own name (The Bride Wore Black, The Black Path of Fear, "After-Dinner Story"*, "And So to Death" ["Nightmare"*], "The Boy Who Cried Murder'* ["Fire Escape"], "Face Work" ["Angel Face"], "Dime a Dance" ["The Dancing Detective"], "If I Should Die Before I Wake," "It Had to Be Murder" ["Rear Window"*], "Marijuana"*, "Three O'Clock"*, and many more), or as "William Irish" (Phantom Lady, Deadline at Dawn, Waltz Into Darkness).  More than forty films have been based on his works.  Other pseudonyms used by Woolrich were "Ted Brooks" (for one short story published in 1934), and "George Hopley" (for two novels, the 1945 Night Has a Thousand Eyes -- filmed in 1948 -- and Fright, which seems to have fallen down a crack until Hard Case Crime reprinted it in 2007.

Fright has all the trademark Woolrich claustrophobia in spades, plus an (un)healthy dose of paranoia.

From the original 1950 jacket copy:

"He kept staring at her with something akin to horror.

" 'A second-degree count?' he whispered.  'You don't know what you're saying at all.  I can't hope for that.  Don't you understand?  I didn't tell you all of it that night.  The girl wasn't the only one...there were others....'

"Instantly he saw his mistake.  Instantly he saw that he had lost her irrevocably now, pushed himself beyond the pale.  If there had been a chance before this, now there was none. and frightened -- he had always been so quick to take fright -- he tried to hold her to him.  And she in turn, taking fright from his fright, abandoned him even quicker, receded all the more and with added haste, just as a frantic beating of the water sometimes sends an unmanned boat further off."

We begin in 1915.  Prescott Marshal, 25, is beginning to rise in his career as a broker.  He is engaged to Marjorie Worth, a woman with social standing and family money -- and what's more important to Prescott is that he truly loves her.  His future seems certain.  Then one night he has a one-night stand with a girl who had picked him up at a bar, and things fell to pieces.  The girl returns to blackmail Prescott, threatening to tell Marjorie, as well as his boss (this is 1915, remember, and brokerage companies are very adverse to scandal).  She returns for more and more money.  Desperate, Marshall suddenly moves out of his apartment and rents another under an assumed name.  She manages to fins him on his wedding day, demanding more money.  Frightened, angry, confused, he kills her.  Just moments before his best man shows up to deliver him to his nuptials.  Prescott keeps him waiting at the door while he stuffs the body in a closet.  And then he is taken to his wedding.  He has no chance to go back and properly dispose of the body.  But, he realizes, the apartment is rented under a false name; no one knows who he is.  Still, fear and guilt rack him throughout the wedding and the ensuing honeymoon.

On  the honeymoon, his fear of returning to New York overpowers him.  Rather than go back to New York, he takes Marjorie to Philadelphia where he begins to works at a different brokerage (for less money than he was making in New York).  Marjorie, because a wife's duty is to follow and obey her husband, asks no questions -- at least, none aloud.  Prescott's fear of being found isolates the couple.  Then, a new face appears at the office, evidently transferred from Detroit, although, with the war, there is not enough work to justify another employee.  Prescott gets suspicious, discovers the man is actually a private detective from New York, and fears being trapped.  Nothing can be allowed to prevent Prescott from fleeing at a moment's notice.  Desperate, Prescott uses a rifle to kill a man whom he thought was Wise, the private detective, but Prescott makes an error and kills the wrong man.  The Marjorie announces that she is pregnant.  This would tie the couple down to Philadelphia for months, meaning that Prescott would not be able to escape at a moment's notice.  He orders Marjorie to get an abortion.  Marjorie obeys (she is a dutiful wife, after, all) but it destroys their marriage.

There is still the problem of Wise, whom Prescott is convinced is after him.  Following a company smoker (where the male employees had a chance to let down their hair), Wise is found dead at the bottom of a ravine and Prescott is feeling more free than he had in months.  Without telling Marjorie, he cancels the lease on their apartment, cleans out his bank account, and books two one-way tickets to San Francisco.  He breaks the news to her that they will be leaving that night, without an explanation..  Marjorie, desperately unhappy through the marriage, walks out on him.  In Prescott's mind everything he has done, the people he has killed, was done to save his marriage to Marjorie, never realizing that fear and paranoia was what was driving him and not his love for Marjorie.

As I mentioned, this is a very claustrophobic book,, often told in short, rapid-fire, rat-a-tat-tat sentences.  At the beginning, this unique approach seems off-putting, but the reader soon realizes that this is how Prescott's mind works, moving quickly from one thing to another, never pausing to reflect, only to react.  It adds up to a psychologically intense and powerful novel, but I can see why it remained unreprinted for more than half a century.

It's a masterful work by a master of suspense.

*also reprinted under the "William Irish" by-line.