For those of you who has read this my Film Noir and Pulp Fiction page it must be somewhat obvious that my absolute favourite
among crime writers is The Edgar Allan Poe of the 20th century -

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (1903-1968) who also wrote under the names of George Hopley and William Irish.

This tormented writer danced with death his whole life and his unique and beautiful darkly romantic way of writing gave him the
epithet The Poet of the Shadows (Francis M. Nevins).

Phantom Lady was written in 1942 under the alias William Irish and published by Lippincott. The first novel or story under that
pseudonym, and that was because Simon & Schuster had the right to use Cornell Woolrich for it's then published Black Series.
Above you can see the 1st 1946 Swedish edition of Phantom Lady to the left, published by Bokförlagsaktiebolaget Centrum.
To the right you can see the Swedish 1972 Pulp Fiction edition (kioskdeckare) from B. Wahlströms with an alternate Swedish title,
and as you can see the left sleeve illustration gives away the spoiler, The Case of the Crazy Hat.

Some other Woolrich novels and films:

For most Woolrich lovers i guess it's not the plots, who often resemble each other, we're after but the mix of a crime story with dark
poetry and with the out of this world beautiful romantic language of his.
However, the plot of Phantom Lady is pretty good with it's standard Woolrich "Race against the Clock" element and with the
delightful Case of the Crazy Hat clue. You often hear complaints about his plots even though Cornell Woolrich is one of the most
filmatized of all crime fiction writers, anywhere, anytime, along with someone like the brit James Hadley Chase, so the plots of his
couldn't be that bad you would think.

Cornell Woolrich was one of the pioneer writers of crime who laid the ground for Pulp Fiction and the Film Noir genre