Although his work is not as widely read as that of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich almost single-handedly invented the noir genre--creating a dark, psychologically menacing world--and producing some of the greatest works of pure suspense fiction ever written. Woolrich's work is hard-boiled in the sense that he rejects the tidy resolutions that characterize the deductive type of detective fiction. A Woolrich novel typically finishes with mystery and terror still actively present rather than conveniently dissolved. He also goes further than his better-known contemporaries in his evocation of the source, extent, and consequences of evil. Although the evil that Hammett's and Chandler's heroes fight has a specific manifestation that they can identify and, to some extent, neutralize, Woolrich's heroes, on the other hand, are victimized and damaged by forces of evil that are often abstract, nameless, and all-powerful. Woolrich's plots and techniques reflect a worldview far...