Bizarre and outrageously plotted little mysteries that are hard to describe - a guy's girlfriend disappears while they are walking to dinner and nobody will believe she was ever real, a guy stuffs a corpse in his luggage so he can dump it at sea only to have the cop he shares a cabin with suspect there is something fishy, a guy's dance marathon partner literally dies on her feet and he doesn't realize it until he's accused of her murder. Totally weird and quirky stories that Woolrich uses to point out the dark side of life, humanity, and the unfairness of it all. One bad decision or circumstance usually leaves a normally average person in the midst of paranoia, fear, and despair. Life isn't fair nor predictable.

The end never plays out quite what you expect, the impossible becomes the mundane, but it's all delivered in a hard boiled frenzy of suspense and fear.

You have to read them to understand what a Woolrich story is like, but you'll never be bored. ( )