Ah, SAVAGE BRIDE. I don't consider it a crime novel really.
There was once a sub-genre of adventure fiction that were
stories of the tropics or jungle. It provides exotic settings
(jungle camps, various types of plantations, etc.), savages
who can menace, a beautiful girl usually in a scanty hot
weather outfit, and often a touch of the supernatural.
Woolrich spent a fair amount of his youth with his engineer
father in Mexico and Central America and he used a tropical
background in several stories. The most successful was
probably his novel BLACK ALIBI
(1942), which Val Lewton and Jacques Tournier did film.
I consider SAVAGE BRIDE one of the weakest novels by
Woolrich. He wrote a few that featured such a sappy guy as a
lead character that I have trouble reading them.
As I said at the beginning of the month, the best Woolrich
novels that I've read were published in the 1940s. I have not
read FRIGHT, which came out in 1950 (same as SAVAGE BRIDE)
under the George Hopley name and is now in print from Hard
Case Crime. When I began buying Woolrich, that was the
hardest novel to obtain and now that it is back in print I
look forward to reading it.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Jeff Vorzimmer"
<jvorzimmer@...> wrote:
>
> One of the books I'm reading for Woolrich month is
Savage Bride, his
only
> Gold Medal PBO. I'm about a quarter of the way
through and it doesn't
seem
> to be crime fiction, though it's pure pulp fiction
very noir--kinda
like a
> Val Lewton/Jacques Tournier story.
>
> For those who've read this one, is it a crime
novel?
>
> Jeff
>
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