Safe Return Doubtful

American Fiction Pulp/Noir – Published 1941

At seemingly random intervals in the St Anslem Hotel in New York single young men check in to the titular room but are found in the early hours of the morning on the pavement below, having supposedly leapt to their death from the French windows.

Suicide is assumed, it is set during the Depression, though they appeared to have been in good spirits, whistling show tunes, with a new job or recently engaged, though a suitably ambiguous note is found by the bed. House Detective Striker becomes increasingly concerned at the casual attitude of the City Police detective who always seems to be the one sent when called.

This is more of a thriller than a ‘golden age’ detective story. The enjoyment in it doesn’t rest of who or how the murders were done. It’s typically Woolrich in several ways, dark with lighter moments in all the right places, and wonderfully written. It’s neither a short story nor long enough to be a novella, just Woolrich-length.. he wrote so many at about 50-80 pages, as they fitted the magazine format so well. This first appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly #120 in 1938, and no doubt was the product of Woolrich’s imagination fuelled by him living in a hotel at the time he wrote it.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5