The wheel spins

Best known as the basis for Hitchcock's classic early film, The Lady Vanishes, Ethel White's The Wheel Spins is a gripping and accomplished work in its own right. The plot is deceptively simple, and the premise-a woman meets a mysterious stranger during a long railway journey-is classic. It's easy to see why Hitchcock found this novel so compelling and so well-suited to his particular brand of filmmaking.The protagonist of the story is a young woman named Iris Carr, who suffers a blackout just...