The greatest purveyor of noir suspense in twentieth-century fiction is, hands-down, Cornell Woolrich. Black Alibi, The Bride Wore Black, Phantom Lady, Rendezvous in Black, Deadline at Dawn, The Black Angel, The Black Curtain, The Black Path of Fear, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes help comprise a body of work unsurpassed by his contemporaries, or anyone since.

As blood and gore, sleaze and graphic violence, and unredeemable protagonists who narrated from the bottom of a bottle crept inward from the outer fringe of noir, sadly smothering all other shades of noir in its path as it took over the mainstream, Woolrich’s more flowery fever-dream type of noir and suspense, based on atmosphere and mood, emotion, circumstance, loneliness and romantic longing, became out of fashion. For many years it was difficult to find even the most important works of this great writer who, along with Raymond Chandler, helped create the genre. Fortunately in our time, at least a portion of his canon has become available electronically. Remnants of some limited-run print versions of bigger novels and short story collections are even circulating in the ether, if one is willing to dig deep enough into the wallet.

Not to be overlooked, however, is the pulp magazine work of Woolrich, which pre-dated or coincided with his biggest and greatest achievements. Woolrich supposedly wrote over two-hundred short stories and novelettes, some of which have sadly been lost to time and the demise of the publications in which they appeared. But many have not. They weren’t all great, but even the ones which weren’t, were entertaining.

Published in the May 1935 issue of Dime Detective Magazine, Kiss of the Cobra is a very pulpy weird menace tale. It isn’t top-tier Woolrich by any stretch, but it is tremendous fun for fans of that sub-genre of pulp. In Kiss of the Cobra, an off-duty detective is resting with his wife, Mary, at his father-in-law’s home when the father-in-law returns from India with a slinky wife named Veda. She has an almost hypnotic power, and movements which seem less than human. In fact, she reminds the protagonist of a snake!

I won’t ruin what happens, or the typically Woolrichian brand of justice which ends this short story, but there’s definitely something very strange about Veda. While not quite on a par with Woolrich’s better early pulp stories, it’s a fun bedtime read if you enjoy old pulp with a weird menace vibe. Don’t be fooled by its first appearance in Dime Detective; it’s actually an odd choice for the magazine, as it is much more appropriate for Strange Mysteries, or Weird Tales.

To rate a story like this with any context, you have to imagine opening up an issue of the aforementioned back in the day, and discovering this story. Though perhaps a bit campy now, it most certainly would have entertained, and undoubtedly would have been among the most memorable stories in that particular issue. Fun stuff, but definitely more enjoyable to fans of early pulp, and Woolrich in particular, than the general reading public. ( )