Mannequin

Mannequin

Cornell Woolrich is "our greatest writer of Suspense Fiction" - Francis Nevins, Woolrich biographer.<br /><br />"Mannequin" was first published in The Saint Magazine in October, 1966. Of the four stories published by the magazine, this is easily the best.<br />Leone, a low ranking fashion model for a Paris designer is being followed day and night for no apparent reason and it's scaring the daylights out of her. On her walk home one night after work, in a psychologically terrifying scene where she tries to lose the stranger, she finally reaches the safety of her apartment and her watchdog landlady. But while peering out her darkened window at the street below, she realizes she can no longer see her pursuer when suddenly there's a scratching at the door. <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.