A name rarely found in crime anthologies, Vera Caspary was an acclaimed author of stories and novels, and also wrote, or co-wrote, a number of successful Broadway plays and numerous screenplays. Among her many mystery novels, two of them, Laura (1943) and Bedelia, written two years later, are considered to be classics and were both filmed successfully. Set in the sophisticated high-ish society of 1940s' Manhattan, Laura opens with police detective Mark McPherson investigating the murder of Laura Hunt, a beautiful, intelligent and ambitious young advertising executive, who was due to marry her fiance, Shelby Carpenter, in a few days. With her playwright's skill, Caspary deftly assembles an intriguing and eccentric cast, including assorted arrogant friends, the handsome but vacuous Carpenter and Laura's friend and mentor, celebrated columnist Waldo Lydecker, for whom the term 'waspish' might well have been coined. Smitten with his protege, the wily Lydecker has for years been using his column to ridicule and thereby eliminate Laura's gentlemen friends, with only Carpenter seemingly immune to his vitriolic barbs.

Gradually, McPherson (and the reader) gets to know the real Laura and, her demise notwithstanding, begins to fall for her, even as he ponders how such a lovely, sensitive creature could have kept company with a coterie of hedonistic poseurs and parasites. With a brilliant and entirely credible twist, however, Caspary turns McPherson - and the whole story, in fact - upside down, giving the book a whole new direction. Despite being frequently praised as a noir novel, it does not really fit into that category, although the policeman's growing romantic obsession with a corpse and the fatal shotgun blast to the face certainly provide the novel with a substantial edge, but it remains a uniquely powerful and mesmerizing novel, and a high point in Caspary's successful career.

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