Death Sits in the Dentist's Chair

Death Sits in the Dentist's Chair

Cornell Woolrich is "our greatest writer of Suspense Fiction" - Francis Nevins, Woolrich biographer.<br /><br />"Death Sits in the Dentist's Chair" was Cornell Woolrich's first short mystery and was published in "Detective Fiction Weekly" in 1934. By publishing this story, the magazine and it's editor can probably be credited for launching one of America's greatest writers, if not greatest writer, of "suspense fiction" having bought and published Woolrich's first two short mystery stories. For obvious reasons, a must-read for any Woolrich fan!<br /><br />A newspaper reporter visits his dentist friend to have a cavity filled but has to wait until the dentist finishes with a previous patient, a poor and illiterate Italian immigrant who then dies in the dental chair. Rogers, convinced it was murder, undergoes the same surgery to prove his theory, which turns into a frantic race against time - a recurring device in Woolrich stories. <br /><br />Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (4 December 1903 – 25 September 1968) is one of America's best crime and noir writers who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. He's often compared to other celebrated crime writers of his day, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler.<br /><br />He attended New York's Columbia University but left school in 1926 without graduating when his first novel, "Cover Charge", was published. "Cover Charge" was one of six of his novels that he credits as inspired by the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Woolrich soon turned to pulp and detective fiction, often published under his pseudonyms. His best known story today is his 1942 "It Had to Be Murder" for the simple reason that it was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie "Rear Window"starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was remade as a television film by Christopher Reeve in 1998.