Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man

I Married a Dead Man is one of Cornell Woolrich’s best–known crime novels.  The plot is convoluted but it works like a well-oiled machine.  The central character is the woman who marries a dead man, but I won’t spoil it for you by explaining how she does that. 

The focus is very much on her, and the psychological stresses on her in her very peculiar situation.  Woolrich makes a somewhat unlikely scenario seem totally plausible.  And he gives us characters to care about – they’re not bad people, they just find themselves in a uniquely difficult situation from which they have to try to extricate themselves. 

There are also some very nice plot twists, and they’re twists that seem believable.  The only other Woolrich novel I’ve read, The Bride Wore Black, was just as ingenious but in I Married a Dead Man he pulls all the pieces together much more successfully. 

An excellent little novel.