About the book

About Desperate Times Stories from the Great Depression

"Woolrich not only dislodged the detective from his traditional pedestal... but challenged the very notions of hero and quest. Now the hero could be the villain, or the dupe; the quest itself could prove to be deranged, as the moral moorings of standard detective fiction fall away." --Richard Corliss, TIME Desperate Times: Stories from the Great Depression is a brand new collection of eight of famed crime and suspense writer Cornell Woolrich’s best short stories, all set in the bitter days of the Great Depression. Beaten down by poverty, corruption, and the cruel hand of fate, his characters are driven to desperate acts, such as theft, self-sacrifice, brutality, or even… murder. Woolrich employs breathless pacing, life-or-death stakes, and an almost claustrophobic proximity to his characters’ tortured states of mind to explore the anguish and agony these dark times evoked. Published between 1935 and 1942 (with the exception of the autobiographical “Even God Felt the Depression,” published after Woolrich’s death), the stories in Desperate Times provide a look into the formative years of Woolrich’s suspense writing as it developed in the shadow of the worst economic decade in America’s history. Coming after the gilded-age tales he wrote in the late 1920s and early 1930s but before he hit his peak in the 1940s, each storygives readers a chance to get to know one of America’s best suspense writers just as he was learning to perfect his craft. Stories included: -The Heavy Sugar -Murder Always Gathers Momentum -Goodbye, New York -Borrowed Crime -Dormant Account -I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes -The Death of Me -Even God Felt the Depression Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968), sometimes writing under the pseudonyms William Irish or George Hopley, has been dubbed the “Poe of the Twentieth Century” by his biographer, Francis M. Nevins Jr. He mastered the dark and gritty genre of noirand wrote hundreds of short stories, novellas and full-length novels, including the widely acclaimed The Bride Wore Black. Many of his works were adapted into films, television shows and radio programs by auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut.

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