this is one of those books that defy the star-rating system, offering a reading experience composed of equal parts fascination and repulsion. it's a noir novel in the true sense of the term, where the protagonist is the victimizer (and, here, also the victim) and the ending is one that offers satisfaction to nobody at all, not one goddamn soul. you don't root for anybody in these kinds of novels, and what comeuppance there is contains no consolation or atonement or peace or purpose, just a bitterness, and an emptiness. why read such books? well, because they can be breathtaking in their ugliness, sometimes. and because sometimes it's relevatory to have the sheen of the world stripped away.rendezvous in black basically replicates the plot of woolrich's earlier the bride wore black, but with one key difference: here, it's the man who seeks revenge against the people he thinks are responsible for the death of his sweetheart - not by killing them, but by killing or otherwise going after the women they love, and thus (he thinks) inflicting the same nightmare onto the men. the gender politics are utterly fascinating, especially if one takes this plot doubling to be a deliberate gesture, rather than the unfortunate outcome of woolrich's long and miserable decline*. fascinating, and abhorrent. i almost used "but" there instead of "and," but i think "and" it is and must be. because if the plot replication is deliberate, that means woolrich was really pushing the envelope in thinking about the gendered dynamics of crime through different kinds of victimizer/victim doublings. and yet it still profoundly troubles me that in this book, women remain "pure" victims who are subordinate to, and dependent on, the autonomous male antagonists. and YET i also find myself haunted by that shift into martine's perspective that comes in the fifth rendezvous, which one can read as a singular and chilling indictment of said gender problems, or rather the way those problems are made structurally necessary to the noir genre itself. (reading that bit, i thought of the scene between anton chigurh and carla jean moss in no country for old men, the film. it had some of the same feeling to it.)GAHHHH as you can tell from the above paragraph, my thoughts are rather incoherent right now. this is partially the fault of my brain but i think it also has something to do with the book, which frankly is a mess of ludicrous improbabilities but still manages to get the mind working in ways your regular ol' potboiler can't. i don't know if i liked this book, but i would recommend it (with reservations). how does that translate into star ratings? it doesn't. but 3 is good enough for now.*cornell woolrich's life was, as they say, stranger than fiction. swift hollywood fame followed by even swifter obscurity, a love-hate relationship with his mother that would make freud proud, closeted homosexuality, health issues that included diabetes and alcoholism and gangrene (!!), and so on. from the introduction: "On September 25, 1968, he died of a stroke, leaving two novels, a collection of short stories, and an autobiography unfinished. He had prepared a long list of titles for stories he'd never even begun, and one of these captures his bleak world view in a single phrase: 'First You Dream, Then You Die.'"
On the eve of his wedding, Johnny Marr's fiancee is killed in a freak accident by a liquor bottle hurled out of the window of a small plane. Johnny snaps and goes on a psychopathic killing spree, tracking down the passengers of the plane and killing the most important woman in each man's world. Can Inspector Cameron stop Johnny before it's too late?Rendezvous in Black has a lot in common with my favorite Woolrich book, The Bride Wore Black. Johnny systematically hunts down each man, figures out who the most important woman in his life is, and kills them in a variety of ways. Just like in The Bride Wore Black, the fun was trying to decide how he would do it. One thing that irked me was that all of his aliases had the initials JM. Way to camouflage yourself, you human chameleon!Even though the plot was largely a retread of TBWB, it was still a good read. The cops kept getting closer but kept coming up short. A few of the male characters made stupid decisions right out of a bad movie. Woolrich's blatant misogyny was a little hard to ignore. Once again, the women were either bitches, whores, or doormats. Despite that, I did love the way Florence treated her husband, not to give anything away. Let's just saw she didn't go the Black Angel route when she found out he was cheating...To sum it up, I liked Rendezvous in Black but I liked it better the first time Woolrich wrote it when it was called The Bride Wore Black.
Do You like book Rendezvous In Black (2004)?
The saddest revenge story ever written? Johnny Marr, an almost anonymous young man in middle America (think Our Town), must find the man who killed his fiancée and make the killer suffer as he has suffered. But there are five possible killers, so they must all suffer. The plots that Johnny executes against them require near-omniscience on his part. Never mind that Johnny could have identified the actual killer much more easily--for better or for worse, Woolrich demands that you grant him absurdities.First reading: circa 2004Second reading: 13 April 2009
—David
Basically the plot allows for this to be read as several short pieces stitched together. It's very Hitchcockian in mood. To correct many reviews here, Dorothy wasn't murdered. It was an accident.Things that bugged me:There are more than a few times where Woolrich will write something like, "The man then walked into the room". Since it's a character that we've been introduced to before, it quickly becomes a needless affectation. Also, (view spoiler)[the major plot point in Rendezvous 4 is incorrect. When a traveler goes West across the Date Line, the traveler jumps forward a day. From Wiki: "Crossing the IDL westbound results in 24 hours being added, advancing the calendar date by one day." You get 48 hours of one date when traveling eastward. (hide spoiler)]
—Viktor
What a terrific book, the first I’ve read by Woolrich. This is an incredibly well-crafted story written in a noir style I found more compelling than many. Some reviews mention an overblown melodrama, but I found that element to emphasize and enhance the deep emotion of the protagonist/villain, Johnny Marr. This story is about revenge being served very cold, with Marr absolutely determined that those who caused him such pain at the start will feel the same loss he did before it’s all over. The root of the triggering incident was an unfortunate, albeit stupid accident, so there’s that sense that his list of targets deserve something, but maybe a little less than Johnny is doling out.How Woolrich was able to define the coming plot early on, and then be able to weave so much suspense through the rest of the book, I found masterful. We see what’s coming, but we’re riveted anyway. Examples of a Hitchcock-type feel here are everywhere, but get ready for the terror of a blind woman’s knowledge that she’s not alone. Powerfully sad watching the pain of that central character lurking in the shadows from the beginning through a tragic end. I’ll be looking forward to my next Woolrich novel, for sure.
—Alan Livingston
