“Jean collects people, as a velvet evening wrap collects lint.”


Woolrich sometimes reworked stories during the later stages of his career, and Murder, Obliquely is one of those. This reworking of Death Escapes the Eye is at once a tremendously fine piece of writing, and a story that feels, well, oblique. It’s murder, alright, but the reader comes at it sideways, the angle so sharp and obscuring neither we, or the protagonist, ever see a body. No one is arrested, and perhaps never will be. Yet we know…

Woolrich had a sixth sense about narrators, and here he chose to use Annie Ainsley as the voice. Her friend is Jean Medill. Jean is married to Cipher, but quite cavalier about her flirtations. This leads to a friendly rivalry of sorts over Dwight Billings. At a dinner party, however, Dwight is revealed to be terribly in love with a woman Annie can easily see is a gold digger. Quietly, as each encounter with Dwight comes with an embarrassingly awkward revelation about the woman, Annie falls desperately in love.

A door in a hallway, and a tremendously well written scene as Annie reveals her feelings to Dwight are highlights of this novelette. The ending remains true to the title, as it too is oblique. It’s one of those stories that when you finish it, you don’t appreciate it right away. It has to work its way into your soul a while before you come to the conclusion that it is actually quite a stunning piece of short fiction. Only because I’d have preferred a more conclusive, traditional ending, I can’t give this five stars. I’m still giving it four, however, because it’s a very unusual piece in the Woolrich canon, and worth reading. ( )