Clearly on the run, Bill ‘Scotty’ Scott and Eve Roman find themselves in Havana, and are set about living as full a life as they can when the past catches up with them and Scotty finds himself accused of murder. With the police apparently willing to believe his protestations of innocence — at first, at least — Scotty soon finds himself in a nightmarescape where his memory of events and the evidence he has to back it up diverge, and so only one course becomes available to him: go on the run again. And so, in an unfamiliar city and with no knowledge of the language, just how does this hunted protagonist go about proving his innocence? And what of the threat that surrounds him, the ‘someone’ he’s fleeing, who is keen that Scotty get some just deserts?

It’s been over two years since I reviewed any Cornell Woolrich, which seems incredible when you consider how completely I loved his work when he first started appearing on The Invisible Event. But, well, behind the scenes I’ve struggled through some of his stuff — the doom-drenched but ooooooverlong The Black Alibi (1942) and the somewhat tedious, Francis Nevins-edited Night and Fear [ss] (2004) collection — and lost the name of action, so to speak. But you can’t keep a good fan down, and so it’s back to the novels and The Black Angel (1943), which interestingly finds a new way to explore themes and approaches that would seem to recur throughout Woolrich’s oeuvre.