A drunken one- night stand leads to a stalker which leads to a murder. On his wedding day, no less!
And then? Paranoia!!!

This book is really, really good! Following the main character's descent into madness is quite the ride! And that ending... wow! I really liked chapter 16, and the way that the author describes the movements of ‘death’! “Death just watched and waited, in position to command both sides at once.” Just an excellent, page turner of a book!

“The train had died. Every train dies at the end of every journey. The train was dead now, and lying in its coffin: the station.”

“His hand shifted. His love story came to an end.”

“The instinct to live is greater than the instinct to love.” ( )

One of Cornell Woolrich’s better novels. Well done, and what a killer ending. ( )

Cornell Woolrich manages to layer on the paranoia and fear. We see poor nice guy Prescott Marshall go from being pestered by a one night stand to the abyss and it's nearly all his own doing. Oh, and along the way he takes everyone except the insurance salesman with him. We see the Prescott make his first bad decisions innocently enough but then his paranoia pushes him to make one bad decision after another, piling them on. With dumb luck unknowingly on his side he carries around the shovel digging his own grave one spadeful at a time and he just can't seem to stop himself.

I thought this was going to be one of Woolrich's weaker efforts. At times it tipped on the edge of melodrama but Woolrich never let it slip over.

Woolrich is good at showing how precarious life is; how one small, seemingly innocent mistake can lead to disaster, nightmare, and death. The innocent are not spared with the guilty either.

This was one of the first e-books I ever bought, when there were only around 50,000 Kindle format titles. ( )

The gimmick was pretty easy to guess, but, that's not really the point with Woolrich, is it? ( )

One of the poorer entries in the Hard Case Crime library. Disjointed narrative, passive sentences, cliched characters made for an unsatisfying read. ( )