“The road was empty behind her, in moonlight and shadow, back as far as the eye could reach. There was only silence, on it and the thickness that bordered it. Silence and moonlight and shadow.”

This is one of very few Woolrich tales I had not yet read, my familiarity more shaded to the great Val Lewton produced thriller, The Leopard Man, which was based on this fabulous novel of suspense. Black Alibi is one of Woolrich’s famous “Black” novels, tied together not just by Black in the title, but by an overarching theme and noir world. Written during that period which cemented Woolrich not only as the greatest purveyor of pure noir suspense fiction, but as one of the great writers of the twentieth-century, today the Black novels are recognized as a sort of series.

The opening chapter of Black Alibi, while well-written and engaging, seemed more straightforward than I’d expected, as American publicity agent Jerry Manning hoists a black Jaguar onto pretty red-haired singer/dancer Kiki Walker, a Detroit girl who, after some misfortune, has found celebrity and influence in the third largest city south of the Panama Canal. But then the Jaguar escapes, and Black Alibi becomes an extraordinary novel of mystery and suspense. Woolrich paints to perfection the atmosphere of “his” Ciudad Real — not Spain, but South America:

“The poor don't cheat one another. They're all poor together.”

Having lived much of his youth in Mexico (if you’re a fan of the tortured author, you know the story) perhaps helped him capture so beautifully the flavor and ambiance of a place through its people. One of those is a policeman named Robles who is under pressure from above to end the brutal, horrific killings of young women by the escaped Jaguar. But it is the victims Woolrich focuses on, letting the reader live in their hearts and minds until that horrific moment when each is overtaken by that unknown thing in the darkness. There is descriptive brilliance in the telling, suspense building to nearly unbearable heights as Woolrich paints a rich and evocative portrait of each young woman, and builds the suspense in each chapter to such a fever pitch, we can’t stop reading:

“She couldn't go back into that maw of darkness behind her that she had passed through once already. True, it was as dark ahead of her, but there was something even worse about darkness revisited than about darkness already explored. As though she would be giving latent evil a second chance at her if she returned.”

There is a bit of The Bride Wore Black/Rendezvous in Black feel to Black Alibi as one by one, someone/something stalks its prey. The savage killings begin with seventeen/eighteen year old Teresa Delgado. She is apprehensive of leaving her home in the evening because there are rumors that the cat is out and about, killing. Frustratingly, her mother sends her out for charcoal despite these rumors. Teresa at first tries to assuage her own fears:

“What can happen to me? This is Ciudad Real.”

But she does not reach the nearest place in time before it closes, and must go farther into the darkness, her fear building as she hears something in the shadows. When she reaches the place farther from her home, both she and the reader feel momentarily relieved. In her encounter with the man selling her the charcoal, however, we can feel Teresa’s apprehension:

“She tried to prolong the trivial little transaction all she could. Because while it lasted it spelled safety, light, another’s company. Afterwards would come darkness, fear, solitude again.”

What follows is one of the most frustrating and harrowing moments in suspense fiction — yes, in ALL suspense fiction — when we want to open a door for Teresa her stupid mother will not. It is a lesson for the blood and gore crowd — both writers and readers — that it is unneeded, because what the mind can imagine is far more horrific than any crass or explicitly described violence could ever evoke. It’s a brilliant piece of writing.

Then there is the lovely Conchita Contreras, slipping out to meet her young boy, despite warnings from her mother:

“It is hard not to be beautiful at eighteen, and for her it would have been a physical impossibility.”

But her night is fraught with peril, and she finds herself trapped, and alone, in the last place on earth she wants to be:

“Even the afterglow of the sun was gone now. Only a slight greenish blackness, like oxidized metal, above the trees in the west, showed where it had been. The rest was dark, dark, dark; night was in possession and had caught her in its trap.”

And later, as she’s pursued:

“She had no leisure to think of anything but the present moment, in the midst of all these terrors, but if she had she would have realized the darkness already had its victory. She was already a little dead. Whether she ever got out of here again or whether she didn’t she would never be the same. Fright had pushed her permanently back into some atavistic past, lived long ago.”

We then get the part-time hooker named Clo-Clo, who wants to marry at thirty-six and have a family. And finally we get young Americans Sally O’Keefe and Marjorie King, only one of whom will escape with her life. Each chapter is mesmerizing, even if it does ad an episodic quality to the narrative. Another type of mystery is slowly building as well, because Manning doesn’t believe it’s the Jaguar doing the killings. He can’t get Robles to agree with that a human being is behind the killings, however. The evidence all points to the Jaguar, but why hasn’t it been caught? Woolrich uses Manning to sway the reader, making enough arguments in favor of a real flesh and blood, two-legged animal being responsible, that we begin to wonder which it is. But then a girl survives, and Manning begs her to help him:

“But I can’t get them to listen to me. They’re as sure on their side as I am on mine. And they’re the police and I’m just—a loose guy.”

She’s having none of it at first, but finally agrees. It is also the beginning of a romance — unless she too, falls prey to whatever is out there in the darkness. Manning finds another ally, but his elaborate plan goes awry, and it is one of the most exciting, heart-stopping conclusions Woolrich ever wrote.

Is it the Jaguar? Is it a crazed killer? Is it both, or neither? Despite what you may have heard, not all of Woolrich’s tales end horribly. That’s sort of a “rookie” mistake. Is this one of those with a happy ending, or one of his novels where fate pulls everyone into its jaws and laughs? You’ll have to read it to discover the answer. Written in 1942, Black Alibi reads surprisingly fresh, as though it could have been written last week, but for a minor tweak here or there. A few may downgrade it a bit for a somewhat episodic quality to the narrative, but it’s very involving, and has an incredibly satisfying conclusion despite all the victims. I absolutely loved this entry in his Black series, Black Alibi, and rank it just below my all-time favorite of his novels, Deadline at Dawn. Awesome! ( )

I read Black Alibi for its status as inspiration for the (superior, excellent) Val Lewton produced movie The Leopard Man, or to be more specific the first 3/5 of Black Alibi are the inspiration for that film, which narrative diverts radically at that point. Interestingly, however, that is precisely when the book comes alive depicting a pair of intense stalking scenes, with the prey changing roles mid-way. Weirdly, perhaps, the book reminded me of the submarine film The Enemy Below, which gets fantastic tension from a reversal of expectations halfway through the third act, and then documents an unspooling of counter-moves.

Alas, unlike the Lewton picture, a male viewpoint dominates particularly those first several sections, with an unconvincing omniscient voice for female victims, and more problematically, an element of "deserve" for them. It adds an element of sleaze to what otherwise would be an excellent document of the paucity of choices for South American women at the time.

For what it is worth, it is a playfair mystery, though that element is not crucial to the story; the ending is fairly anticlimatic, but the 80 tense pages before that are more than nearly any book manages, so I'm not going to nitpick. ( )

Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich is part of his “Black” series of Noir stories. It opens spectacularly in a large South American city as American publicity agent, Jerry Manning gets his client, singer Kiki Walker to walk a black jaguar down the street and into a busy restaurant. The jaguar escapes and all too soon there are a series of brutal killings of young women that have the police hunting for the large cat while Jerry Manning wonders if the monster they are hunting is the jaguar that he was responsible for or if there is another type of monster that is preying on the vulnerable.

While there are certainly aspects of this story that are far-fetched, the author manages to build the suspense by focusing each chapter upon the current victim as he guides the reader through the dark as an unknown thing is on the hunt. The evidence points to the jaguar but Manning becomes convinced that a two-legged animal is actually responsible and is determined to track the creature and bring him down.

Black Alibi is a fast paced story that is extremely suspenseful and stylish which is most probably why it was made into a film entitled “The Leopard Man” in the 1940s by director, Jacques Tourneur. While this is less a mystery and more of a horror story, the author cleverly plays upon our sense of foreboding and our fear of the dark as each stalking scene is gruesomely played out. Black Alibi is a gripping, atmospheric read delivered by the master of Noir, Cornell Woolrich. ( )

In the South American city of Cuidad Real a glamorous woman enters a trendy, high-profile restaurant with a black panther tenuously tethered to the end of a thin gold leash. For Kiki Walker, an up and coming singer, no publicity stunt is too outrageous even though the big cat and Kiki are equally on edge. It isn't long before disaster strikes and the panther is sprung free. Of course he is! That's when the grisly murders begin. Young women in different parts of Cuidad Real are found torn to bits but is the panther to blame? One man doesn't think so. How does an out of work booking agent clear his panther's reputation when all evidence points to the cat?
Black Alibi is set in an era when establishments hired people to dust off your shoes or straighten your errant hair and the end is a little hokey but, overall, a very entertaining read. ( )

Creepy noir. ( )