A revenge plot, very similar in its approach to another Woolrich novel, The Bride Wore Black, adapted into film by Truffaut. In this case, it is a man who decides to avenge his dead fiancée. One should not despair if, when starting chapter 2, it seems to have nothing to do with chapter 1. It is the author's peculiar—and very effective—way of linking the events.
Woolrich handles ellipsis with the hand of a master, skillfully dispensing information, playing with the reader as Hitchcock would with his audience... It is true that it borders on the improbable and perhaps even exceeds it, but the reader accepts this as part of the game and remains delighted. It hardly matters that the protagonist combines the traits of a neurotic and ten CIA agents, that everything turns out so meticulously perfect, or that the narrator resorts to a terrifying and fatalistic tone, especially since he knows how to balance it with other sequences of a local color where a subtle irony against timeless customs and vices is palpable.