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Laura
"I am bound to tell this story, just as Mark McPherson was obliged to continue his searches, out of a deep emotional involvement in the case of Laura Hunt. I offer the narrative, not so much as a detective yarn as a love story..."
This is Laura's book, although most of it is told by three men—the three men who knew her best. When the story opens, Laura has already been murdered.
Some of it is told by that nasty gossip columnist, Waldo Lydecker, written partly out of gloating interest in tragedy of any kind, partly because Laura was the only person Waldo had ever loved.
And it could not have been written without the help of Shelby Carpenter, Laura's fiance, who knew more about her death than anyone suspected.
Most of it, however, was written by Detective Mark McPherson, although Mark never heard of Laura until after she had been murdered. Often a detective's duty is to reconstruct the life of a victim—but not to the point where he falls in love with her.
Here is the secret of Laura's death...and her life.
237 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1942
185 people are currently reading
5927 people want to read
About the author
Vera Caspary
43 books105 followersVera Caspary, an acclaimed American writer of novels, plays, short stories and screenplays, was born in Chicago in 1899. Her writing talent shone from a young age and, following the death of her father, her work became the primary source of income for Caspary and her mother. A young woman when the Great Depression hit America, Caspary soon developed a keen interest in Socialist causes, and joined the Communist Party under a pseudonym. Although she soon left the party after becoming disillusioned, Caspary's leftist leanings would later come back to haunt her when she was greylisted from Hollywood in the 1950s for Communist sympathies. Caspary spent this period of self-described 'purgatory' alternately in Europe and America with her husband, Igee Goldsmith, in order to find work. After Igee's death in 1964, Caspary returned permanently to New York, where she wrote a further eight titles. Vera Caspary died in 1987 and is survived by a literary legacy of strong independent female characters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 563 reviews
October 7, 2025
”He came toward me and I shrank deeper into the corner. This was strange. I had never felt anything but respect and tenderness for this brilliant, unhappy friend. And I made myself think of Waldo dutifully; I thought of the years we had known each other and of his kindness. I felt sick within myself, ashamed of hysteria and weak shrinking. I made myself stand firm; I did not pull away; I accepted the embrace as women accept the caresses of men they dare not hurt. I did not yield, I submitted. I did not soften, I endured.
‘You are mine,’ he said.”
The beautiful, vivacious Laura Hunt is dead.
Not just dead. Her face has been blasted by buckshot, obliterating her loveliness, leaving only the painting on the wall as a memory of her alluring elegance. It is certainly very personal to shoot someone in the face, but to shoot a lovely woman in the face is somehow a larger crime, a more vicious offense.
Who shot Laura Hunt?
The New York Detective, Mark McPherson, has already made a name for himself as being a man on the upward track. He has recently recovered from being shot, and so not only is he gaining a reputation for being smart and creative, but he has also proven his metal as well. He is thoughtful and oddly vulnerable. He didn’t want this case. A murder case is too simple for what he wants to investigate, but as he starts chasing down leads and hears the lies and the half truths of everyone involved, he starts to become interested. There is one other complication:
He falls in love with Laura, well the painting of Laura. This is her at her absolute best, immortalized with gorgeous eyes and alabaster skin.
Waldo Lydecker is also in love with Laura. ”Waldo had kissed me often; it was his habit to kiss when we parted, and often affectionately over some compliment. I felt nothing, neither shivering repulsion nor answering flame. A kitten nuzzled against my legs, a dog licked my hands, a child’s moist lips touched my cheeks: these were Waldo’s kisses.” Anybody else feel the need to *shudder*.
The lovely Gene Tierney is cast as Laura in the 1944 movie.
He helped her get started, and her career has seen a steady climb because of her association with Waldo. She is grateful, but his possessiveness, treating her as if she is a sculpture he formed with his own hands, is becoming a problem. He is wealthy, successful, an intellectual snob who is completely self-centered. Frankly, he’d be appalled to know this novel was titled Laura and not Waldo. His alibi for the night of the murder did make me laugh out loud. He was supposed to have dinner with Laura, but she never showed. ”I had eaten a lonely dinner, reviling the woman for her desertion, and read Gibbon in a tepid tub.”
I like Gibbon, too, but he isn’t so scintillating I’m going to sit in a tub of lukewarm water and read him. The thing about Waldo is he isn’t very likeable, and yet, somehow I like him. Maybe it is because he can recognize the finer things in life and express his reverence so eloquently for art, books, and plays.
There is also Shelby Carpenter. He is Laura’s fiance. One thing that Mark McPherson and Waldo Lydecker can agree on is that he is not the man either one of them would choose for Laura. Of course, they each feel they are a much better choice than he. Shelby comes from a different world. Laura describes Shelby, showing that she is well aware of his faults: ”My people were plain folk; the women went West with their men and none of them found gold. But Shelby came from ‘gentle’ people; they had slaves to comb their hair and put on their shoes. A gentleman cannot see a lady work like a n-----r; a gentleman opens the door and pulls out a lady’s chair and brings a whore into her bedroom.” Shelby’s only ambition is to find a woman to take care of him. He is an expensive habit, but he is charming and capable of looking very good in a nice suit.
Vera Caspary, as you can tell from some of the quotes I shared, has not only written a great noir novel, but also expresses the difficulty that women have in building a career and navigating the uncertain waters of the relationships they must maintain with the men who are helping them. Men rarely do anything without expecting something in return. The interplay with Shelby, Waldo, and Mark, who each want her but want her for different reasons, adds some depth to a plot that was crafty enough not to need such great characterization. Men who help men expect loyalty in return, but men who help women expect compliance. A woman desired is a woman with power, but that power is built with a shaky foundation too reliant on the changing whims of men.
There was a terrific noir film made of this book in 1944, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. This is one of my favorite noir films. I’m really at a loss to say whether you should read the book first or watch the movie. I watched the movie first and felt that the twist was not only handled well, but was so deliciously shocking. The characters are all developed with more depth in the book, so there is certainly merit to reading the book as well. I’m certainly intrigued by the progressiveness of Caspary’s writing and look forward to reading more books by her.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
‘You are mine,’ he said.”
The beautiful, vivacious Laura Hunt is dead.
Not just dead. Her face has been blasted by buckshot, obliterating her loveliness, leaving only the painting on the wall as a memory of her alluring elegance. It is certainly very personal to shoot someone in the face, but to shoot a lovely woman in the face is somehow a larger crime, a more vicious offense.
Who shot Laura Hunt?
The New York Detective, Mark McPherson, has already made a name for himself as being a man on the upward track. He has recently recovered from being shot, and so not only is he gaining a reputation for being smart and creative, but he has also proven his metal as well. He is thoughtful and oddly vulnerable. He didn’t want this case. A murder case is too simple for what he wants to investigate, but as he starts chasing down leads and hears the lies and the half truths of everyone involved, he starts to become interested. There is one other complication:
He falls in love with Laura, well the painting of Laura. This is her at her absolute best, immortalized with gorgeous eyes and alabaster skin.
Waldo Lydecker is also in love with Laura. ”Waldo had kissed me often; it was his habit to kiss when we parted, and often affectionately over some compliment. I felt nothing, neither shivering repulsion nor answering flame. A kitten nuzzled against my legs, a dog licked my hands, a child’s moist lips touched my cheeks: these were Waldo’s kisses.” Anybody else feel the need to *shudder*.
The lovely Gene Tierney is cast as Laura in the 1944 movie.
He helped her get started, and her career has seen a steady climb because of her association with Waldo. She is grateful, but his possessiveness, treating her as if she is a sculpture he formed with his own hands, is becoming a problem. He is wealthy, successful, an intellectual snob who is completely self-centered. Frankly, he’d be appalled to know this novel was titled Laura and not Waldo. His alibi for the night of the murder did make me laugh out loud. He was supposed to have dinner with Laura, but she never showed. ”I had eaten a lonely dinner, reviling the woman for her desertion, and read Gibbon in a tepid tub.”
I like Gibbon, too, but he isn’t so scintillating I’m going to sit in a tub of lukewarm water and read him. The thing about Waldo is he isn’t very likeable, and yet, somehow I like him. Maybe it is because he can recognize the finer things in life and express his reverence so eloquently for art, books, and plays.
There is also Shelby Carpenter. He is Laura’s fiance. One thing that Mark McPherson and Waldo Lydecker can agree on is that he is not the man either one of them would choose for Laura. Of course, they each feel they are a much better choice than he. Shelby comes from a different world. Laura describes Shelby, showing that she is well aware of his faults: ”My people were plain folk; the women went West with their men and none of them found gold. But Shelby came from ‘gentle’ people; they had slaves to comb their hair and put on their shoes. A gentleman cannot see a lady work like a n-----r; a gentleman opens the door and pulls out a lady’s chair and brings a whore into her bedroom.” Shelby’s only ambition is to find a woman to take care of him. He is an expensive habit, but he is charming and capable of looking very good in a nice suit.
Vera Caspary, as you can tell from some of the quotes I shared, has not only written a great noir novel, but also expresses the difficulty that women have in building a career and navigating the uncertain waters of the relationships they must maintain with the men who are helping them. Men rarely do anything without expecting something in return. The interplay with Shelby, Waldo, and Mark, who each want her but want her for different reasons, adds some depth to a plot that was crafty enough not to need such great characterization. Men who help men expect loyalty in return, but men who help women expect compliance. A woman desired is a woman with power, but that power is built with a shaky foundation too reliant on the changing whims of men.
There was a terrific noir film made of this book in 1944, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. This is one of my favorite noir films. I’m really at a loss to say whether you should read the book first or watch the movie. I watched the movie first and felt that the twist was not only handled well, but was so deliciously shocking. The characters are all developed with more depth in the book, so there is certainly merit to reading the book as well. I’m certainly intrigued by the progressiveness of Caspary’s writing and look forward to reading more books by her.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
November 11, 2021
Originally published by Vera Caspary in 1942 as a seven-part story in Collier’s Magazine under the title Ring Twice for Laura, today we know it simply as Laura. This classic mystery-romance is sometimes overshadowed by the magnificent film it spawned a couple of years later, starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. Director Otto Preminger's masterpiece is one of the finest mysteries in the history of motion pictures. But that lofty height is equaled by the original source for the film, Caspary’s terrific story. Quite simply, this is one of the finest and most unusual mystery novels ever written. Caspary used a unique narrative structure to create an atmospheric and involving novel of mystery and romance which has stood the test of time.
The story revolves around Detective Mark McPherson's investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt. McPherson has somewhat of a celebrity status within the department due to some front page cases with which he has been involved. But he is unprepared for the high society circles Laura moved in, and Caspary allows the reader to see through the detective's eyes the affectations of the rich. It is a world where people begin their insults with endearing terms like darling, then proceed to use words the roughest seaman wouldn't use to tear you apart.
Laura's benefactor and sometimes companion, Waldo Lydecker, is the poster boy for such behavior. He uses his well known newspaper column to destroy all of Laura's would-be suitors. Only the man she was set to marry, Shelby Carpenter, was able to withstand the glare of Lydecker's poison-pen scrutiny. But on the weekend before she was to be married, a knock on the door late at night, followed by a shotgun blast, cuts her life short.
Waldo Lydecker begins the narration, then McPherson picks up where he left off. It is during McPherson's narration we get to see events as they really are, bringing about for the reader an understanding of the detective's thought process and actions so twisted out of context by Lydecker. Caspery's descriptions of the encounters between Lydecker and McPherson are splendid. You can almost feel the breeze in the popular open-air restaurant where they dine and hear the young woman going from table to table singing, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Caspary also allows the reader to feel McPherson's frustration with the pretty-boy, Shelby Carpenter. Above all this, however, Caspary paints a picture of Laura that allows us to understand how McPherson has fallen in love with a dead girl, because we have also.
Laura could not have been more different from these people, her inner beauty inspiring loyalty in her working-class maid, Bessie. McPherson soon begins to wonder how a smart girl like Laura managed to surround herself with such morally empty people, their arrogance and gutter ethics only surpassed by their lack of character. But Caspery is smart enough to let us see into a woman's heart as well, and make us understand.
On a rainy night in Laura's swanky 5th Avenue walk-up apartment, while McPherson sits underneath her painting looking through her diary, searching for a clue to her murder, Caspary suddenly turns an already great mystery-romance novel into a classic. We simply can't put it down at this point. It is a fantastic read and stands with a handful of others in the genre as one of the best ever written.
Since this edition appears to no longer be in print, I highly recommend purchasing the book or Kindle version, because it is the same story. The difference is simply the magazine layout, which included some nice illustrations to accompany each segment of the story. Here is one example that is actually on-line — https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/51/... — to get an idea of what it looked like in magazine form before it became the sensation that it was — and still is, for mystery lovers.
Other than the illustrations, all you will be missing apparently is the famous article Caspary wrote about the book, called My “Laura” and Otto’s. But that too, has been placed on-line by UNZ — http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-19... — so that you can still enjoy it. The book in novel form is still available, however, and despite the passage of time, it is as fresh today as it was in the 1940s. This is one book in the mystery genre you don't want to miss.
The story revolves around Detective Mark McPherson's investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt. McPherson has somewhat of a celebrity status within the department due to some front page cases with which he has been involved. But he is unprepared for the high society circles Laura moved in, and Caspary allows the reader to see through the detective's eyes the affectations of the rich. It is a world where people begin their insults with endearing terms like darling, then proceed to use words the roughest seaman wouldn't use to tear you apart.
Laura's benefactor and sometimes companion, Waldo Lydecker, is the poster boy for such behavior. He uses his well known newspaper column to destroy all of Laura's would-be suitors. Only the man she was set to marry, Shelby Carpenter, was able to withstand the glare of Lydecker's poison-pen scrutiny. But on the weekend before she was to be married, a knock on the door late at night, followed by a shotgun blast, cuts her life short.
Waldo Lydecker begins the narration, then McPherson picks up where he left off. It is during McPherson's narration we get to see events as they really are, bringing about for the reader an understanding of the detective's thought process and actions so twisted out of context by Lydecker. Caspery's descriptions of the encounters between Lydecker and McPherson are splendid. You can almost feel the breeze in the popular open-air restaurant where they dine and hear the young woman going from table to table singing, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Caspary also allows the reader to feel McPherson's frustration with the pretty-boy, Shelby Carpenter. Above all this, however, Caspary paints a picture of Laura that allows us to understand how McPherson has fallen in love with a dead girl, because we have also.
Laura could not have been more different from these people, her inner beauty inspiring loyalty in her working-class maid, Bessie. McPherson soon begins to wonder how a smart girl like Laura managed to surround herself with such morally empty people, their arrogance and gutter ethics only surpassed by their lack of character. But Caspery is smart enough to let us see into a woman's heart as well, and make us understand.
On a rainy night in Laura's swanky 5th Avenue walk-up apartment, while McPherson sits underneath her painting looking through her diary, searching for a clue to her murder, Caspary suddenly turns an already great mystery-romance novel into a classic. We simply can't put it down at this point. It is a fantastic read and stands with a handful of others in the genre as one of the best ever written.
Since this edition appears to no longer be in print, I highly recommend purchasing the book or Kindle version, because it is the same story. The difference is simply the magazine layout, which included some nice illustrations to accompany each segment of the story. Here is one example that is actually on-line — https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/51/... — to get an idea of what it looked like in magazine form before it became the sensation that it was — and still is, for mystery lovers.
Other than the illustrations, all you will be missing apparently is the famous article Caspary wrote about the book, called My “Laura” and Otto’s. But that too, has been placed on-line by UNZ — http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-19... — so that you can still enjoy it. The book in novel form is still available, however, and despite the passage of time, it is as fresh today as it was in the 1940s. This is one book in the mystery genre you don't want to miss.
April 5, 2020
La lectura de "Laura" no ha sido muy estimulante. Se podría decir que es una novela blanda. Está muy bien escrita, pero la trama es lenta. A mi me gusta que haya un poco de acción y aquí no pasa nada. El detective va de interrogatorio en interrogatorio intentando descubrir quién miente.
Reading "Laura" was not very stimulating. You could say it is a soft novel. It is very well written, but the plot is slow. I like that there is a bit of action and nothing happens here. The detective goes from interrogation to interrogation trying to find out who is lying.
Reading "Laura" was not very stimulating. You could say it is a soft novel. It is very well written, but the plot is slow. I like that there is a bit of action and nothing happens here. The detective goes from interrogation to interrogation trying to find out who is lying.
July 5, 2017
First appearing in Collier's Magazine in 1942, this fantastic mystery/romance novel by Vera Caspary is sometimes overshadowed by the magnificent film it spawned, starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. Director Otto Preminger's masterpiece is one of the finest mysteries in the history of motion pictures. But that does not detract from how wonderful the story is in novel form. Quite simply, this is one of the finest and most unusual mystery novels ever written. Caspary used an unique narrative structure to create an atmospheric and involving mystery which has stood the test of time.
The story revolves around Detective Mark McPherson's investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt. McPherson has somewhat of a celebrity status within the department due to some front page cases with which he has been involved. But he is unprepared for the high society circles Laura moved in, and Caspary allows the reader to see through the detective's eyes the affectations of the rich. It is a world where people begin their insults with endearing terms like darling, then proceed to use words the roughest seaman wouldn't use to tear you apart.
Laura's benefactor and sometimes companion, Waldo Lydecker, is the poster boy for such behavior. He uses his well known newspaper column to destroy all of Laura's would-be suitors. Only the man she was set to marry, Shelby Carpenter, was able to withstand the glare of Lydecker's poison-pen scrutiny. But on the weekend before she was to be married, a knock on the door late at night, followed by a shotgun blast, cuts her life short.
Waldo Lydecker begins the narration, then McPherson picks up where he left off. It is during McPherson's narration we get to see events as they really are, bringing about for the reader an understanding of the detective's thought process and actions so twisted out of context by Lydecker. Caspery's descriptions of the encounters between Lydecker and McPherson are splendid. You can almost feel the breeze in the popular open-air restaurant where they dine and hear the young woman going from table to table singing, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Caspary also allows the reader to feel McPherson's frustration with the pretty-boy, Shelby Carpenter. Above all this, however, Caspary paints a picture of Laura that allows us to understand how McPherson has fallen in love with a dead girl, because we have also.
Laura could not have been more different than these people, her inner beauty inspiring loyalty in her working-class maid, Bessie. McPherson soon begins to wonder how a smart girl like Laura managed to surround herself with such morally empty people, their arrogance and gutter ethics only surpassed by their lack of character. But Caspery is smart enough to let us see into a woman's heart as well, and make us understand.
On a rainy night in Laura's swanky 5th Avenue walk-up apartment, while McPherson sits underneath her painting looking through her diary, searching for a clue to her murder, Caspary suddenly turns an already great mystery-romance novel into a classic. We simply can't put it down at this point. It is a fantastic read and stands with a handful of others in the genre as one of the best ever written. It is timeless, as fresh today as it was in 1943. This is one book in the mystery genre you don't want to miss.
The story revolves around Detective Mark McPherson's investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt. McPherson has somewhat of a celebrity status within the department due to some front page cases with which he has been involved. But he is unprepared for the high society circles Laura moved in, and Caspary allows the reader to see through the detective's eyes the affectations of the rich. It is a world where people begin their insults with endearing terms like darling, then proceed to use words the roughest seaman wouldn't use to tear you apart.
Laura's benefactor and sometimes companion, Waldo Lydecker, is the poster boy for such behavior. He uses his well known newspaper column to destroy all of Laura's would-be suitors. Only the man she was set to marry, Shelby Carpenter, was able to withstand the glare of Lydecker's poison-pen scrutiny. But on the weekend before she was to be married, a knock on the door late at night, followed by a shotgun blast, cuts her life short.
Waldo Lydecker begins the narration, then McPherson picks up where he left off. It is during McPherson's narration we get to see events as they really are, bringing about for the reader an understanding of the detective's thought process and actions so twisted out of context by Lydecker. Caspery's descriptions of the encounters between Lydecker and McPherson are splendid. You can almost feel the breeze in the popular open-air restaurant where they dine and hear the young woman going from table to table singing, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Caspary also allows the reader to feel McPherson's frustration with the pretty-boy, Shelby Carpenter. Above all this, however, Caspary paints a picture of Laura that allows us to understand how McPherson has fallen in love with a dead girl, because we have also.
Laura could not have been more different than these people, her inner beauty inspiring loyalty in her working-class maid, Bessie. McPherson soon begins to wonder how a smart girl like Laura managed to surround herself with such morally empty people, their arrogance and gutter ethics only surpassed by their lack of character. But Caspery is smart enough to let us see into a woman's heart as well, and make us understand.
On a rainy night in Laura's swanky 5th Avenue walk-up apartment, while McPherson sits underneath her painting looking through her diary, searching for a clue to her murder, Caspary suddenly turns an already great mystery-romance novel into a classic. We simply can't put it down at this point. It is a fantastic read and stands with a handful of others in the genre as one of the best ever written. It is timeless, as fresh today as it was in 1943. This is one book in the mystery genre you don't want to miss.
June 25, 2022
A great twist is included in Laura which, if you have never seen the classic movie, you do not see coming. If you have seen it, you know what's going to happen, but I found this engaging anyway.
Laura, a gorgeous career girl, is found murdered in her apartment. A writer friend, Waldo Lydecker, (absolutely divine name) narrates the story in the beginning. Then, the detective, Mark McPherson, takes over the tale in an entirely different style from the intellectual and fussy Lydecker. The author is able to sound pretty modern in the voices of the two men, irritatingly, she sounds less sure of herself when a woman's thoughts are revealed.
Anyhow, this is a slim little, noir mystery that still packs a punch.
Laura, a gorgeous career girl, is found murdered in her apartment. A writer friend, Waldo Lydecker, (absolutely divine name) narrates the story in the beginning. Then, the detective, Mark McPherson, takes over the tale in an entirely different style from the intellectual and fussy Lydecker. The author is able to sound pretty modern in the voices of the two men, irritatingly, she sounds less sure of herself when a woman's thoughts are revealed.
Anyhow, this is a slim little, noir mystery that still packs a punch.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 1, 2025
[9/10]
She was a slender thing, timid as a fawn, and fawn-like, too, in her young uncertain grace. She had a tiny head, delicate for even that thin body, and the tilt of it along with the bright shyness of her slightly oblique dark eyes further contributed to the sense that Bambi - or Bambi's doe - had escaped from the forest and galloped up the eighteen flights to this apartment.
Laura Hunt had the face of an angel, the kind that makes men weak at the knees and turn them into ad-hoc poets. And yet somebody was driven not to poetry but to murder, blasting that pretty face with a shotgun as she opened the door to her expensive Fifth Avenue apartment one sultry summer evening. Reluctant detective Mark MacPherson, a rising star in the police department of the metropolis is tasked with finding the murderer, a job he feels is beneath his previous successes dealing with government corruption and organised crime. McPherson must start not only with the careful investigation of the crime scene, but also with interviewing Laura's closest associates : fashionable writer, critic and socialite Waldo Lydecker and marketing executive Shelby Carpenter, the victim's fiancee.
Most of us are familiar with the story from the Otto Premminger classic movie of the same name. It's extremely difficult, after seeing the movie several times, to put any other face on the main character than Gene Tierney, yet the experience of the novel was enhanced and not diminished by the familiarity. Tierney was unforgettable in the titular role, yet I feel the book Laura has more depth and more style than the movie one. I was able to pay better attention to the style of the presentation and to the psychological study / social commentary that makes the book much more than a simple crime story. The quality of the writing, the subtlety of the changes in narrative style and the surprisingly biting critique of the 'American Dream' - all these made me wonder why Vera Caspary is not better known, more widely read? A quick look at her biographical notes online offer a few suggestions and furthermore point to several autobiographical notes in her most famous novel.
To solve the puzzle of her death, you must first resolve the mystery of Laura's life. This is no simple task. She had no secret fortune, no hidden rubies. But, I warn you. McPherson, the activities of crooks and racketeers will seem simple in comparison with the motives of a modern woman. A complicated, cultivated modern woman. Concealment, like a worm i' the bud, fed on her damask cheek.
The story is narrated successively by each of the main characters, offering us clues in the manner they describe the victim and their relationship with her . The first one is Waldo Lydecker - a snobbish, self-centred intellectual who sees himself as the Pygmalion who guided Laura through success in the glitzy New York society. He is a collector of fine china and glassware and quite clearly a phony, but what is he really hiding behind the polished public persona?
I should have been an actor. Had I been physically better suited to the narcissistic profession, I should probably have been among the greatest of my time.
Lydecker likes o pontificate on a number of subjects (his own magnificence, culture, food, manners, etc), but relevant to the story might be his opinion on crime literature:
I still consider the conventional mystery story an excess of sound and fury, signifying far worse than nothing, a barbaric need for violence and revenge in that timid horde known as the reading public. The literature of murder investigation bores me as profoundly as its practice irritated McPherson. Yet I am bound to tell this story, just as he was obliged to continue his searches, out of a deep emotional involvement in the case of Laura Hunt. I offer the narrative, not so much as a detective yarn, as a love story.
I wish I were its hero. I fancy myself a pensive figure drawn, without conscious will, into a love that was borne of violence and destined for tragedy. I am given to thinking of myself in the third person.
Opposite Waldo Lydecker is a practical, pragmatic man who makes a job out of finding other people secrets. Detective Mark McPherson sees a lot and keeps his own council, most of the time, but even he gets rattled by the airs Lydecker assumes:
You're smooth all right, but you've got nothing to say.
McPherson is a self-made man who pulled himself out of the gutter without any outside help and who doesn't take kindly to the patronising style of the literary critic. Yet, maybe because of his humble origins, Mark falls under the spell of the glamorous Laura. More than the mystery of her death, he is captivated by her portrait hanging over the fireplace at the murder scene, by her books and her wardrobe, by the reasons that made her postpone marriage to a very presentable suitor and drove her instead to seek a solitary retreat in the country, a couple of days before the wedding. Can the dour Scotsman maintain the distance between his professional and his emotional life?
In such inconsistent trifles as an ancient baseball, a worn 'Gulliver', a treasured snapshot, he sought clues, not to the passing riddle of a murder, but to the eternally enigmatic nature of woman. This was a search no man could make with his eyes alone; the heart must also be engaged.
We hear next from Shelby Carpenter, the Southern gentleman with the chiselled profile and perfect manners who was supposed to marry Laura in the week after her murder. His chapters take the form of an official police interview, in the presence of his attorney - from which we can deduce he is one of the suspects in the crime. Without getting into details about the alibis and the damaging evidence against Shelby, his role turns on the question of the definition of a modern man, the other side of the coin where Laura is the personification of the modern woman. Shelby has good looks, good breeding and a lot of success with women, but he is lost in the jungle of New York, a habitat where he is closer to the role of gigolo than to that of bread-winner.
Auntie Sue once told me I'd grow tired of a six-foot child. Auntie Sue said that when a woman feels the need for a man that way, she ought to have a baby. [...] Ten years in and out of precarious jobs hadn't taught him that gestures and phrases were of less importance in our world than aggresiveness and self-interest; and that the gentlemanly arts were not nearly as useful as proficiency in double-dealing, bootlicking, and pushing yourself ahead of the other fellow.
Ultimately, Shelby is little better than the cynical Lydecker, another selfish jerk who tries to fake his way through life by acting like a gentleman:
I picked up a cigarette. He hurried to light it.
'Don't do that,' I said.
'Why not?'
'You can't call me a murderer and light my cigarette.'
>><<>><<>><<>><<
I find it a bit difficult to continue without giving a hint at the big reveal that comes halfway through the story, so consider this a mild warning (it happens about the same time in the movie also)
SPOILERS
Laura Hunt is not dead. Somebody else was murdered in her apartment
SPOILERS
>><<>><<>><<>><<
What has Laura has to say for herself? As far as the crime is concerned, she acts highly suspicious, giving little reason for her fickle behaviour before her planned wedding and lacking an alibi. Yet, Laura alive is even more fascinating than her portrait to detective McPherson, who is seduced by their similar histories of humble origins and becoming a self-made professional in a hostile city. Mark is equally repelled by Laura's obvious lies. Vera Caspary walks here on a high wire, well balanced between a budding romance and feminist empowerment, probably the best part of the whole story. Caspary is equally adept in avoiding the clyches of detective fiction, making Laura more than a femme fatale and Mark something other than a classic gumshoe. Here are a few snapshots from the two main actors:
- I see nothing wrong with your face, Miss Hunt.
- Skip it. I've never tried to get by on my beauty.
- - - -
- In detective stories there are two kinds, the hard-boiled ones who are always drunk and talk out of the corners of their mouths and do it all by instinct; and the cold, dry, scientific kind who split hairs under a microscope.
- Which do you prefer?
- - - -
Freedom meant something quite different to me, Mark. Maybe you'll understand. It meant owning myself, possessing all my silly and useless routines, being the sole mistress of my habits. Do I make sense? [...] Freedom meant my privacy. It's not that I want to lead any sort of double life, it's simply that I resent intrusion. Perhaps because Mama always used to ask where I was going and what time I'd be home and always made me feel guilty if I changed my mind. I love doing things impulsively, and I resent it to a point where my spine stiffens and I get gooseflesh if people ask where and what and why.
It's easy to see in Laura a poster girl of feminism, trying to make her own way through life, deciding who to go out with , when to marry and how to live her life, even irrationally if that's what her mood is. It's less easy to understand how this strong woman got to be so closely linked to Waldo Lydecker and Shelby Carpenter, yet Caspary makes the attempt to explain even these faux steps:
I had been wickedly amused and proud that my charms had roused passion in this curiously unimpassioned creature. What a siren I had thought myself, Laura Hunt, to have won the love of a man born without the capacity for loving!
Mark McPherson has a similar revelation as he investigates the life of the girl who died instead of Laura:
... Shelby was a dream walking. He was God's gift to women. I hated him for it and I hated the women for falling for the romance racket. I didn't stop to think that men aren't much different, that I had wasted a lot of adult time on the strictly twelve-year-old dream of getting back to the old neighborhood with the world's championship and Hedy Lamarr beside me on the seat of a five-grand roadster.
By going after the 'dream factory' Caspary makes the transition from the personal drama of one woman to the social implications of a whole generation raised on unattainable promises of wealth, beauty and happiness in the pages of glossy magazines or on big silver screens. Thousands of young men and women leave their small towns to come to Hollywood or Manhattan to become stars. Caspary knows all about it, because she was one of them, struggling to make a career as an advertising writer, living in rundown boarding-houses,trying to make ends meet, dreaming of one day finding true love among the skyscrapers.
I knew the smells.
Sleep, dried soap, and shoe leather. After I left home I'd lived in several of these houses. I felt sorry for the kid, being young and expecting something of her beauty, and coming home to this suicide staircase. And I thought of Laura, offering her apartment because she had probably lived in these dumps, too, and remembered the smells on a summer night. [...] All day while she worked, she lived in their expensive settings. And at night she came home to this cell. She must have been hurt by the contrast between those sleek studio interiors and the second hand furniture of the boarding-house; between the silky models who posed with her and the poor slobs she met on the mouldy staircase.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
I will close my review with an observation by Mark McPherson, made as he watches the crowd of onlookers gathered around the murdered girl's apartment, hungry for any tidbit of gossip : Murder is the city's best free entertainment. .
Nothing much seems to have changed in the decades since Vera Caspary published her novel - tabloids and TV's are still filled with gory murders and unfounded speculations, offered to us as newsworthy. It takes a master's touch to makes us see the real people and the real problems behind this avalanche of gossip and glossy publicity shots, and here I think is the one reason why the present novel will remain relevant for a few decades more.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
disclaimer : I only read the book one time, but Goodreads, as usual, implemented a new feature (re-reading) full of bugs. thanks for nothing...
She was a slender thing, timid as a fawn, and fawn-like, too, in her young uncertain grace. She had a tiny head, delicate for even that thin body, and the tilt of it along with the bright shyness of her slightly oblique dark eyes further contributed to the sense that Bambi - or Bambi's doe - had escaped from the forest and galloped up the eighteen flights to this apartment.
Laura Hunt had the face of an angel, the kind that makes men weak at the knees and turn them into ad-hoc poets. And yet somebody was driven not to poetry but to murder, blasting that pretty face with a shotgun as she opened the door to her expensive Fifth Avenue apartment one sultry summer evening. Reluctant detective Mark MacPherson, a rising star in the police department of the metropolis is tasked with finding the murderer, a job he feels is beneath his previous successes dealing with government corruption and organised crime. McPherson must start not only with the careful investigation of the crime scene, but also with interviewing Laura's closest associates : fashionable writer, critic and socialite Waldo Lydecker and marketing executive Shelby Carpenter, the victim's fiancee.
Most of us are familiar with the story from the Otto Premminger classic movie of the same name. It's extremely difficult, after seeing the movie several times, to put any other face on the main character than Gene Tierney, yet the experience of the novel was enhanced and not diminished by the familiarity. Tierney was unforgettable in the titular role, yet I feel the book Laura has more depth and more style than the movie one. I was able to pay better attention to the style of the presentation and to the psychological study / social commentary that makes the book much more than a simple crime story. The quality of the writing, the subtlety of the changes in narrative style and the surprisingly biting critique of the 'American Dream' - all these made me wonder why Vera Caspary is not better known, more widely read? A quick look at her biographical notes online offer a few suggestions and furthermore point to several autobiographical notes in her most famous novel.
To solve the puzzle of her death, you must first resolve the mystery of Laura's life. This is no simple task. She had no secret fortune, no hidden rubies. But, I warn you. McPherson, the activities of crooks and racketeers will seem simple in comparison with the motives of a modern woman. A complicated, cultivated modern woman. Concealment, like a worm i' the bud, fed on her damask cheek.
The story is narrated successively by each of the main characters, offering us clues in the manner they describe the victim and their relationship with her . The first one is Waldo Lydecker - a snobbish, self-centred intellectual who sees himself as the Pygmalion who guided Laura through success in the glitzy New York society. He is a collector of fine china and glassware and quite clearly a phony, but what is he really hiding behind the polished public persona?
I should have been an actor. Had I been physically better suited to the narcissistic profession, I should probably have been among the greatest of my time.
Lydecker likes o pontificate on a number of subjects (his own magnificence, culture, food, manners, etc), but relevant to the story might be his opinion on crime literature:
I still consider the conventional mystery story an excess of sound and fury, signifying far worse than nothing, a barbaric need for violence and revenge in that timid horde known as the reading public. The literature of murder investigation bores me as profoundly as its practice irritated McPherson. Yet I am bound to tell this story, just as he was obliged to continue his searches, out of a deep emotional involvement in the case of Laura Hunt. I offer the narrative, not so much as a detective yarn, as a love story.
I wish I were its hero. I fancy myself a pensive figure drawn, without conscious will, into a love that was borne of violence and destined for tragedy. I am given to thinking of myself in the third person.
Opposite Waldo Lydecker is a practical, pragmatic man who makes a job out of finding other people secrets. Detective Mark McPherson sees a lot and keeps his own council, most of the time, but even he gets rattled by the airs Lydecker assumes:
You're smooth all right, but you've got nothing to say.
McPherson is a self-made man who pulled himself out of the gutter without any outside help and who doesn't take kindly to the patronising style of the literary critic. Yet, maybe because of his humble origins, Mark falls under the spell of the glamorous Laura. More than the mystery of her death, he is captivated by her portrait hanging over the fireplace at the murder scene, by her books and her wardrobe, by the reasons that made her postpone marriage to a very presentable suitor and drove her instead to seek a solitary retreat in the country, a couple of days before the wedding. Can the dour Scotsman maintain the distance between his professional and his emotional life?
In such inconsistent trifles as an ancient baseball, a worn 'Gulliver', a treasured snapshot, he sought clues, not to the passing riddle of a murder, but to the eternally enigmatic nature of woman. This was a search no man could make with his eyes alone; the heart must also be engaged.
We hear next from Shelby Carpenter, the Southern gentleman with the chiselled profile and perfect manners who was supposed to marry Laura in the week after her murder. His chapters take the form of an official police interview, in the presence of his attorney - from which we can deduce he is one of the suspects in the crime. Without getting into details about the alibis and the damaging evidence against Shelby, his role turns on the question of the definition of a modern man, the other side of the coin where Laura is the personification of the modern woman. Shelby has good looks, good breeding and a lot of success with women, but he is lost in the jungle of New York, a habitat where he is closer to the role of gigolo than to that of bread-winner.
Auntie Sue once told me I'd grow tired of a six-foot child. Auntie Sue said that when a woman feels the need for a man that way, she ought to have a baby. [...] Ten years in and out of precarious jobs hadn't taught him that gestures and phrases were of less importance in our world than aggresiveness and self-interest; and that the gentlemanly arts were not nearly as useful as proficiency in double-dealing, bootlicking, and pushing yourself ahead of the other fellow.
Ultimately, Shelby is little better than the cynical Lydecker, another selfish jerk who tries to fake his way through life by acting like a gentleman:
I picked up a cigarette. He hurried to light it.
'Don't do that,' I said.
'Why not?'
'You can't call me a murderer and light my cigarette.'
>><<>><<>><<>><<
I find it a bit difficult to continue without giving a hint at the big reveal that comes halfway through the story, so consider this a mild warning (it happens about the same time in the movie also)
SPOILERS
Laura Hunt is not dead. Somebody else was murdered in her apartment
SPOILERS
>><<>><<>><<>><<
What has Laura has to say for herself? As far as the crime is concerned, she acts highly suspicious, giving little reason for her fickle behaviour before her planned wedding and lacking an alibi. Yet, Laura alive is even more fascinating than her portrait to detective McPherson, who is seduced by their similar histories of humble origins and becoming a self-made professional in a hostile city. Mark is equally repelled by Laura's obvious lies. Vera Caspary walks here on a high wire, well balanced between a budding romance and feminist empowerment, probably the best part of the whole story. Caspary is equally adept in avoiding the clyches of detective fiction, making Laura more than a femme fatale and Mark something other than a classic gumshoe. Here are a few snapshots from the two main actors:
- I see nothing wrong with your face, Miss Hunt.
- Skip it. I've never tried to get by on my beauty.
- - - -
- In detective stories there are two kinds, the hard-boiled ones who are always drunk and talk out of the corners of their mouths and do it all by instinct; and the cold, dry, scientific kind who split hairs under a microscope.
- Which do you prefer?
- - - -
Freedom meant something quite different to me, Mark. Maybe you'll understand. It meant owning myself, possessing all my silly and useless routines, being the sole mistress of my habits. Do I make sense? [...] Freedom meant my privacy. It's not that I want to lead any sort of double life, it's simply that I resent intrusion. Perhaps because Mama always used to ask where I was going and what time I'd be home and always made me feel guilty if I changed my mind. I love doing things impulsively, and I resent it to a point where my spine stiffens and I get gooseflesh if people ask where and what and why.
It's easy to see in Laura a poster girl of feminism, trying to make her own way through life, deciding who to go out with , when to marry and how to live her life, even irrationally if that's what her mood is. It's less easy to understand how this strong woman got to be so closely linked to Waldo Lydecker and Shelby Carpenter, yet Caspary makes the attempt to explain even these faux steps:
I had been wickedly amused and proud that my charms had roused passion in this curiously unimpassioned creature. What a siren I had thought myself, Laura Hunt, to have won the love of a man born without the capacity for loving!
Mark McPherson has a similar revelation as he investigates the life of the girl who died instead of Laura:
... Shelby was a dream walking. He was God's gift to women. I hated him for it and I hated the women for falling for the romance racket. I didn't stop to think that men aren't much different, that I had wasted a lot of adult time on the strictly twelve-year-old dream of getting back to the old neighborhood with the world's championship and Hedy Lamarr beside me on the seat of a five-grand roadster.
By going after the 'dream factory' Caspary makes the transition from the personal drama of one woman to the social implications of a whole generation raised on unattainable promises of wealth, beauty and happiness in the pages of glossy magazines or on big silver screens. Thousands of young men and women leave their small towns to come to Hollywood or Manhattan to become stars. Caspary knows all about it, because she was one of them, struggling to make a career as an advertising writer, living in rundown boarding-houses,trying to make ends meet, dreaming of one day finding true love among the skyscrapers.
I knew the smells.
Sleep, dried soap, and shoe leather. After I left home I'd lived in several of these houses. I felt sorry for the kid, being young and expecting something of her beauty, and coming home to this suicide staircase. And I thought of Laura, offering her apartment because she had probably lived in these dumps, too, and remembered the smells on a summer night. [...] All day while she worked, she lived in their expensive settings. And at night she came home to this cell. She must have been hurt by the contrast between those sleek studio interiors and the second hand furniture of the boarding-house; between the silky models who posed with her and the poor slobs she met on the mouldy staircase.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
I will close my review with an observation by Mark McPherson, made as he watches the crowd of onlookers gathered around the murdered girl's apartment, hungry for any tidbit of gossip : Murder is the city's best free entertainment. .
Nothing much seems to have changed in the decades since Vera Caspary published her novel - tabloids and TV's are still filled with gory murders and unfounded speculations, offered to us as newsworthy. It takes a master's touch to makes us see the real people and the real problems behind this avalanche of gossip and glossy publicity shots, and here I think is the one reason why the present novel will remain relevant for a few decades more.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
disclaimer : I only read the book one time, but Goodreads, as usual, implemented a new feature (re-reading) full of bugs. thanks for nothing...
March 21, 2016
This classic crime novel was first published in 1942, and in 1944, Otto Preminger made from it the equally classic film starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews and featuring a haunting title song composed by David Raskin. Only after the film's release did Johnny Mercer write the lyrics to the song, which quickly became a jazz standard.
It's a very atmospheric novel, set in New York City, that practically reads in black and white. At the center is Laura Hunt, a "modern" young woman, at least by the standards of 1942. She's thirty years old and unmarried with a career of her own. She has a fiance, but she's constantly pushing back the wedding date because she values her independence. Another, older, man is also in love with her, but to Laura, he's just a valued friend.
Much of this we learn in retrospect, because as the book opens, Laura's housekeeper comes to work one Saturday morning, opens the door, and finds Laura lying on the floor, dead from a shotgun blast. It's not a pretty sight. Assigned to investigate the murder is Mark McPherson of the NYPD. McPherson is entranced by the portrait of Laura that hangs in the living room of her home, and the more he learns about the victim, the more his feelings for her grow. Before long, he's investigating the murder by day and hanging around her home at night, inhaling the lingering scent of Laura's perfume.
As the above would suggest, this is clearly a book with deep psychological issues at its center. There are some amazing twists and turns as the book progresses, and there are very few other crime novels to which one might compare it. This is a riveting story that will appeal to all readers who love the classics in the field
It's a very atmospheric novel, set in New York City, that practically reads in black and white. At the center is Laura Hunt, a "modern" young woman, at least by the standards of 1942. She's thirty years old and unmarried with a career of her own. She has a fiance, but she's constantly pushing back the wedding date because she values her independence. Another, older, man is also in love with her, but to Laura, he's just a valued friend.
Much of this we learn in retrospect, because as the book opens, Laura's housekeeper comes to work one Saturday morning, opens the door, and finds Laura lying on the floor, dead from a shotgun blast. It's not a pretty sight. Assigned to investigate the murder is Mark McPherson of the NYPD. McPherson is entranced by the portrait of Laura that hangs in the living room of her home, and the more he learns about the victim, the more his feelings for her grow. Before long, he's investigating the murder by day and hanging around her home at night, inhaling the lingering scent of Laura's perfume.
As the above would suggest, this is clearly a book with deep psychological issues at its center. There are some amazing twists and turns as the book progresses, and there are very few other crime novels to which one might compare it. This is a riveting story that will appeal to all readers who love the classics in the field
August 12, 2020
Laura is first and foremost a gripping crime story and one of the finest, for that matter. But, unlike most detective stories of the era, it’s also a character study and an enchanting psychological game between its protagonists. The four main characters dance around each other, offering us ample views of their inner selves and complex relationship.
And that’s what put Vera Caspary slightly apart from the other authors of the genre. Apart, but not too far because she was still constrained by the norms of the form; after all, the story screamed to be turned into a movie that had all the ingredients for box-office success.
Apparently she didn’t only want to write a hard-boiled detective story but to also paint the portrait of a modern, liberated woman of her time. Laura, cultivated and self-reliant, makes it on her own in the big city, fights her own battles and earns her own living. She must have seemed rather exotic and must have provoked mixed feelings to the readers, same as she did to her fellow protagonists. She is a femme fatale in her own unique way. I suspect that the film turned her into a more traditional and palatable version of the type.
I think that Caspary wasn’t able to fully defend against stereotypes her strong yet feminine leading character; yet, in the closing, glorious paragraph, an ode to her heroine and to womanhood in general, she blinks the eye to her contemporaries and future readers.
Her writing style is quite intriguing in having used the multiple-narrators method and it reminded me of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and Marco Denevi’s Rosa at Ten O’ Clock. Laura is as enjoyable as those two fine novels.
And that’s what put Vera Caspary slightly apart from the other authors of the genre. Apart, but not too far because she was still constrained by the norms of the form; after all, the story screamed to be turned into a movie that had all the ingredients for box-office success.
Apparently she didn’t only want to write a hard-boiled detective story but to also paint the portrait of a modern, liberated woman of her time. Laura, cultivated and self-reliant, makes it on her own in the big city, fights her own battles and earns her own living. She must have seemed rather exotic and must have provoked mixed feelings to the readers, same as she did to her fellow protagonists. She is a femme fatale in her own unique way. I suspect that the film turned her into a more traditional and palatable version of the type.
I think that Caspary wasn’t able to fully defend against stereotypes her strong yet feminine leading character; yet, in the closing, glorious paragraph, an ode to her heroine and to womanhood in general, she blinks the eye to her contemporaries and future readers.
Her writing style is quite intriguing in having used the multiple-narrators method and it reminded me of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and Marco Denevi’s Rosa at Ten O’ Clock. Laura is as enjoyable as those two fine novels.
April 16, 2025
At the start I thought this book was going to be a 5★ read, I really did.
The scene setting was marvellous. The characters of Laura & her (much) older patron Waldo were interesting. There were some subtle clues about how it was going to play out.
But.. Sigh. One of my bugbears, multiple POV. & Multiple POVs that weren't handled evenly & made the story
But the story threw in a nice twist & I would bet it worked far better as a movie.
https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...
The scene setting was marvellous. The characters of Laura & her (much) older patron Waldo were interesting. There were some subtle clues about how it was going to play out.
But.. Sigh. One of my bugbears, multiple POV. & Multiple POVs that weren't handled evenly & made the story
But the story threw in a nice twist & I would bet it worked far better as a movie.
From Wikipedia. Public Domain
https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...
December 24, 2021
Laura is a young advertising woman who is murdered shortly before her wedding to a colleague. As a NYC detective questions her fiancé and friends he becomes obsessed with Laura. I think I enjoyed the classic movie more than the book, although the movie closely followed the book. The movie was more atmospheric. The book was short, but the investigation did seem to go around in circles. I also didn’t really understand why everyone was in love with Laura. Maybe I would have liked this more if I hadn’t seen the movie and knew the twist, but it was still a pretty good noir mystery.
December 24, 2021
Those who expect a noir classic will likely be disappointed by this "Who Killed the Girl?" detective story with a strong dose of romance, far closer in tone to Daphne du Maurier than James M. Cain. The irritating narrator for the first third of the book paired with the wishy-washy prose gets things off to a bad start, and the disappointment at the predictability of the ultimate villain is only slightly bolstered by the notable surprise around the midpoint. Nevertheless, Laura was the zenith of Caspary's career and the film version, directed by Otto Preminger, is widely hailed as a cinematic triumph.
August 20, 2024
If you're a fan of the 1944 Otto Preminger film version of Vera Caspary's novel, you're likely to find the source material of particular interest.
The book is something of a different animal - yet the film is still a rather faithful, streamlined adaptation. A similarity between the two is possible since the storyline is not complex - outside of the significant, midway twist. In bringing the book to the screen, the screenwriters kept to character basics, reducing (and simplifying) individual shadings in order to deliver a compact, 90-minute flick.
Caspary wrote a 5-part tale that switches POV 4 times in the telling. The main characters take turns dominating the narrative in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Kurosawa's 'Rashomon'.
Essentially, the film sort of jettisons Caspary's overall tone. Sophistication is maintained but the screenplay's dialogue is only intermittently taken from what the author originally served up. Rewatching the film after finishing the book, I could only occasionally hear what was authentically Caspary. The larger part of the script is still intelligent, it's just a kind of translated intelligence.
The main noticeable difference of the novel rests in Part One, from the POV of Waldo Lydecker. Frankly, the Waldo of the book is considerably more annoying than the one portrayed on-screen by Clifton Webb. In the book, Waldo is not just prissy or affected. Let me put it this way: in the film, I could give the character (as played by Webb) the benefit of the doubt (to a degree) - but in the novel Waldo appears to be relentlessly gay (as well as imbued with the belief that he is superior to all other human beings); making any inference to Laura as a love interest laughable.
At one point, Waldo reminds us:
(On-screen, a similar thing happens in 1950's 'All About Eve': As bitchy and borderline nancy-boy as Addison DeWitt can seem, beefier George Sanders still possesses the kind of masculine bravado that eludes Clifton Webb. In Caspary's book, Waldo is drawn in a way that perfectly describes the actor who was originally cast but rejected by Preminger: Laird Cregar.)
In the 20-page afterword provided in the paperback, we learn that Caspary rather liked the overall direction and feel of Preminger's film. She did not, however, particularly care for the way the character of Laura is - as a woman - watered down. I can see Caspary's point; a fair amount of Laura's texture didn't make it to the film.
That may not bother the casual film fan, looking for exactly what Preminger's classic noir offers. But, in finding Caspary, that same fan may end up appreciating the film in a whole new way.
The book is something of a different animal - yet the film is still a rather faithful, streamlined adaptation. A similarity between the two is possible since the storyline is not complex - outside of the significant, midway twist. In bringing the book to the screen, the screenwriters kept to character basics, reducing (and simplifying) individual shadings in order to deliver a compact, 90-minute flick.
Caspary wrote a 5-part tale that switches POV 4 times in the telling. The main characters take turns dominating the narrative in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Kurosawa's 'Rashomon'.
Essentially, the film sort of jettisons Caspary's overall tone. Sophistication is maintained but the screenplay's dialogue is only intermittently taken from what the author originally served up. Rewatching the film after finishing the book, I could only occasionally hear what was authentically Caspary. The larger part of the script is still intelligent, it's just a kind of translated intelligence.
The main noticeable difference of the novel rests in Part One, from the POV of Waldo Lydecker. Frankly, the Waldo of the book is considerably more annoying than the one portrayed on-screen by Clifton Webb. In the book, Waldo is not just prissy or affected. Let me put it this way: in the film, I could give the character (as played by Webb) the benefit of the doubt (to a degree) - but in the novel Waldo appears to be relentlessly gay (as well as imbued with the belief that he is superior to all other human beings); making any inference to Laura as a love interest laughable.
At one point, Waldo reminds us:
"... there is no lack of sustenance in whipped cream."He goes on to illustrate:
"'Laura, my precious babe,' I said to her, 'we shall drink to your frock in champagne.' It was her first taste of it, McPherson. Her pleasure gave me the sensation that God must know when he transforms the blasts of March into the melting winds of April."Waldo goes on and on like that. Like... constantly.
(On-screen, a similar thing happens in 1950's 'All About Eve': As bitchy and borderline nancy-boy as Addison DeWitt can seem, beefier George Sanders still possesses the kind of masculine bravado that eludes Clifton Webb. In Caspary's book, Waldo is drawn in a way that perfectly describes the actor who was originally cast but rejected by Preminger: Laird Cregar.)
In the 20-page afterword provided in the paperback, we learn that Caspary rather liked the overall direction and feel of Preminger's film. She did not, however, particularly care for the way the character of Laura is - as a woman - watered down. I can see Caspary's point; a fair amount of Laura's texture didn't make it to the film.
That may not bother the casual film fan, looking for exactly what Preminger's classic noir offers. But, in finding Caspary, that same fan may end up appreciating the film in a whole new way.
September 10, 2024
I have seen the wonderful 1944 film Laura several times with the beautiful Gene Tierney as the title character, hunky Dana Andrews as the detective, and the consummate Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker, Laura's mentor and best friend. Since I had never read the book, I thought I would give it a try and am so glad I did.
I was afraid that the movie and the book were going to be different since we know what Hollywood does to good novels, but surprisingly there were very few changes which were not major.. Of course, I kept seeing the actors' faces as I read and it was difficult to imagine Waldo Lydecker as an overweight individual but his personality and life style were right on target. The only reason that this only got 4 stars from me instead of 5 was that since Laura was a successful business woman, she was somewhat weak which was rather hard to believe.
If you have not seen the film, I won't mention the plot since it would contain spoilers on which the story revolves. Instead I would recommend this fairly short story and also the film.....they are both very well worth it.
I was afraid that the movie and the book were going to be different since we know what Hollywood does to good novels, but surprisingly there were very few changes which were not major.. Of course, I kept seeing the actors' faces as I read and it was difficult to imagine Waldo Lydecker as an overweight individual but his personality and life style were right on target. The only reason that this only got 4 stars from me instead of 5 was that since Laura was a successful business woman, she was somewhat weak which was rather hard to believe.
If you have not seen the film, I won't mention the plot since it would contain spoilers on which the story revolves. Instead I would recommend this fairly short story and also the film.....they are both very well worth it.
March 25, 2021
The setting is 1941, NYC. A woman is shot dead answering the doorbell. Is this woman who we think she is, and who has killed her? Several are implicated—a former lover, the fiancé, ……. To say more about the plot is unnecessary.
Why four stars? Even if this is a who dunnit, to figure this out it is necessary to understand the characters well. We are given not only a who dunnit mystery to solve but also in-depth character studies. I enjoy analyzing characters, studying motivations, how people act when they are under stress, how past events shape a person and what tips a person from behaving sanely to insanity and criminal behavior. This book kept my interest all the way through!
This is the first who dunnit mystery to have ever pulled me in! I had to figure out what has made this book different. I need well executed character studies--that's the difference. This is what the others lacked. To further clarify--I do not feel for the characters; I never became emotionally attached to them. However, I couldn’t close the book until I understood them.
The story is a set of first person narratives. Each person explains what they know and how they view the events that unfold. Nobody says, “I did it!” but one of them has! The reader must question all that one is told. The story is very cleverly done. That the author has pulled this off is an accomplishment!
The audiobook is narrated by L.J. Ganser, Christian Rummel, Eileen Stevens and Oliver Wyman. I do not know which narrator read each particular part. I have a word of warning—the first character disgusted me. Instinctively, he gave me the creeps. There is nothing wrong with the narration, it is the personality of the character that repulses me. I hated listening so much that I considered giving up on the book! When the character speaking changed, I realized that all of a sudden, I wanted to continue, I was no longer repulsed! An immense sense of relief rushed over me. I know this sounds crazy, but I really sink into books. When I read / listen to a book, I am swallowed up by it. If the reading experience is good, I am happy, I am content. If it is bad, I struggle, I suffer, I’m miserable. My point is, if you react as I do, don’t discard the book at the start, continue at least until the character speaking has changed. The female narrator pleased me least, but the entire narration experience was very good. It is easy to hear the words spoken and the intonations fit the respective characters well. The narration performance I have given four stars.
What have I learned from reading this book? Any book providing in-depth character studies may work for me, even a who dunnit mystery! I am surprised!
Why four stars? Even if this is a who dunnit, to figure this out it is necessary to understand the characters well. We are given not only a who dunnit mystery to solve but also in-depth character studies. I enjoy analyzing characters, studying motivations, how people act when they are under stress, how past events shape a person and what tips a person from behaving sanely to insanity and criminal behavior. This book kept my interest all the way through!
This is the first who dunnit mystery to have ever pulled me in! I had to figure out what has made this book different. I need well executed character studies--that's the difference. This is what the others lacked. To further clarify--I do not feel for the characters; I never became emotionally attached to them. However, I couldn’t close the book until I understood them.
The story is a set of first person narratives. Each person explains what they know and how they view the events that unfold. Nobody says, “I did it!” but one of them has! The reader must question all that one is told. The story is very cleverly done. That the author has pulled this off is an accomplishment!
The audiobook is narrated by L.J. Ganser, Christian Rummel, Eileen Stevens and Oliver Wyman. I do not know which narrator read each particular part. I have a word of warning—the first character disgusted me. Instinctively, he gave me the creeps. There is nothing wrong with the narration, it is the personality of the character that repulses me. I hated listening so much that I considered giving up on the book! When the character speaking changed, I realized that all of a sudden, I wanted to continue, I was no longer repulsed! An immense sense of relief rushed over me. I know this sounds crazy, but I really sink into books. When I read / listen to a book, I am swallowed up by it. If the reading experience is good, I am happy, I am content. If it is bad, I struggle, I suffer, I’m miserable. My point is, if you react as I do, don’t discard the book at the start, continue at least until the character speaking has changed. The female narrator pleased me least, but the entire narration experience was very good. It is easy to hear the words spoken and the intonations fit the respective characters well. The narration performance I have given four stars.
What have I learned from reading this book? Any book providing in-depth character studies may work for me, even a who dunnit mystery! I am surprised!
October 28, 2017
“There are a lot of people who haven't got the brains for their educations.”
First I have to say I haven’t seen the film, am happy to have read the book first since that’s the natural order of things I like to take, and that I plan to watch the well-recommended film as soon as possible.
Laura Hunt is dead, and detective Mark McPherson is assigned to investigate. During the mystery, he relies on the advice and personal insight of one of her mentor and friends, Waldo Lydecker, and shines his suspicious light on her fiancé, Shelby Carpenter.
More than just a simple mystery, the story utilizes an unusual narrative style that goes from Mark’s point of view to McPherson’s, then back again, throwing in a few others for spice. I’m not the biggest fan of revolving points of view in certain mysteries, but here anything else would have dampened the story’s appeal. The narrative style ended up such a unique touch for this story that it’s one of the first things thought of, one of the first things mentioned, and one of the highest achievements this story sought and won.
It’s an interesting take that this story is not involved so much in the solving of a crime, but how the characters are affected by the character and death. Mark becomes more entranced with the character of Laura as he learns about her – through viewing the impressions she’s left on others (like paintings), to learning of her life and through her apartment, through the dedication she’s brought out of her many admirers and suitors. Now he just have to waddle through the mess and find the actual truth. Was she as worthy as the reputation demanded?
There is a surprise in store for the reader, and the author doesn’t wait until the end to bring it out to change the entire stories direction. This story doesn’t stay a straight mystery and it doesn’t hold off on the punches for changing the entire direction of it mid-point.
I can see why it’s considered a classic and why it’s still so highly revered by mystery and crime fans. It gets into the heart and soul of the characters, shines new perspectives on the traits of human obsession and dedications. There was such a small suspect pool that it wasn't hard to guess the culprit during the last phase of the book, but the point of the story isn’t digging out the culprit so much as it is figuring out the depth of genuine emotion and how its inspired.
First I have to say I haven’t seen the film, am happy to have read the book first since that’s the natural order of things I like to take, and that I plan to watch the well-recommended film as soon as possible.
Laura Hunt is dead, and detective Mark McPherson is assigned to investigate. During the mystery, he relies on the advice and personal insight of one of her mentor and friends, Waldo Lydecker, and shines his suspicious light on her fiancé, Shelby Carpenter.
More than just a simple mystery, the story utilizes an unusual narrative style that goes from Mark’s point of view to McPherson’s, then back again, throwing in a few others for spice. I’m not the biggest fan of revolving points of view in certain mysteries, but here anything else would have dampened the story’s appeal. The narrative style ended up such a unique touch for this story that it’s one of the first things thought of, one of the first things mentioned, and one of the highest achievements this story sought and won.
It’s an interesting take that this story is not involved so much in the solving of a crime, but how the characters are affected by the character and death. Mark becomes more entranced with the character of Laura as he learns about her – through viewing the impressions she’s left on others (like paintings), to learning of her life and through her apartment, through the dedication she’s brought out of her many admirers and suitors. Now he just have to waddle through the mess and find the actual truth. Was she as worthy as the reputation demanded?
There is a surprise in store for the reader, and the author doesn’t wait until the end to bring it out to change the entire stories direction. This story doesn’t stay a straight mystery and it doesn’t hold off on the punches for changing the entire direction of it mid-point.
I can see why it’s considered a classic and why it’s still so highly revered by mystery and crime fans. It gets into the heart and soul of the characters, shines new perspectives on the traits of human obsession and dedications. There was such a small suspect pool that it wasn't hard to guess the culprit during the last phase of the book, but the point of the story isn’t digging out the culprit so much as it is figuring out the depth of genuine emotion and how its inspired.
July 12, 2022
2022 Review
Reading this one for book club opened my eyes to another dimension of the plot. It isn't just how each suitor sees Laura. It is what each suitor represents about men. This is a very rich novel for themes and motifs.
And now I've finally forced someone to read the book before watching the movie so I am very curious what the reaction will be to the movie.
2017 Review
I have watched the movie Laura (1944) so many times that even my absent-minded mother has begun to object. She forgets she has seen the film until the movie starts playing and then she protests, "We just watched this!"
I then make her watch it again anyway because I love the movie so much. Needless to say, I was excited to discover my favorite film was based off a novel.
I. Wanted. To. Love. This. Book. So. Much.
And I did! Sort of. But not enough. There is something about the scene in the movie where Det. Lt. Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, is staring at the portrait of Laura and falling in love with her even though she is dead that wins my heart every time. I wanted more of that. I set such high expectations on this book that I don't think it ever could have lived up to them. What a masterpiece it would have been if it did!
This book was really wonderfully written. I liked the changing viewpoints. I like the story. The twists are good. Yet, it wasn't the movie. The pacing felt off. Lines were delivered in different settings and certain, critical scenes from the movie are non-existent in the book.
But...I'm going to try very hard to separate myself from the beloved movie and think of this book as a book completely separate from the film.
It was a really good book. I think it was one of the most enjoyable noir reads I've found in a long time. The author uses light and darkness, shadows and storms, flowers and foreshadowing, to highlight scenes and create atmosphere. There were many wonderful themes laced throughout the story. The romance was somewhat more believable than the movie (oops, not comparing those two anymore) and I thought the balance of the three suitors and what they represented to Laura was interesting. Laura herself is a very complicated character. We get glimpses of her from a few different perspectives and it is interesting to try and figure out what is false and what is real. Womanhood itself gets examined in this story. Is Laura a doll? Dame? Femme fatale? Society woman? Country girl? Are the women around her grasping, slutty, innocent, or confused? This isn't so much a whodunnit as a examination of human character. I think that is why there is less "shock value" in the twist at the end with this story (or maybe I'm just so seeped in the story line that I failed to be distracted.) The point isn't so much "who killed Laura?" as "Who was Laura?"
I liked the ending. It is so...twisted.
I'd definitely buy and re-read this book.
I came to this book hoping it would be "amazing" "five stars" and "MY NEW FAVORITE THING EVER" and instead I got a solid, very enjoyable, four star read. Am I a little disappointed? Yessss but I doubt I would be if I hadn't seen the movie a million times. I definitely recommend this book. I am glad it exists and I really think it stands on its own feet as an excellent work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is one of my all-time favorite movies and I am now discovering IT IS ALSO A BOOK?!??!?!?! OHHHHHH where has this been all my life! :O
Reading this one for book club opened my eyes to another dimension of the plot. It isn't just how each suitor sees Laura. It is what each suitor represents about men. This is a very rich novel for themes and motifs.
And now I've finally forced someone to read the book before watching the movie so I am very curious what the reaction will be to the movie.
2017 Review
I have watched the movie Laura (1944) so many times that even my absent-minded mother has begun to object. She forgets she has seen the film until the movie starts playing and then she protests, "We just watched this!"
I then make her watch it again anyway because I love the movie so much. Needless to say, I was excited to discover my favorite film was based off a novel.
I. Wanted. To. Love. This. Book. So. Much.
And I did! Sort of. But not enough. There is something about the scene in the movie where Det. Lt. Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, is staring at the portrait of Laura and falling in love with her even though she is dead that wins my heart every time. I wanted more of that. I set such high expectations on this book that I don't think it ever could have lived up to them. What a masterpiece it would have been if it did!
This book was really wonderfully written. I liked the changing viewpoints. I like the story. The twists are good. Yet, it wasn't the movie. The pacing felt off. Lines were delivered in different settings and certain, critical scenes from the movie are non-existent in the book.
But...I'm going to try very hard to separate myself from the beloved movie and think of this book as a book completely separate from the film.
It was a really good book. I think it was one of the most enjoyable noir reads I've found in a long time. The author uses light and darkness, shadows and storms, flowers and foreshadowing, to highlight scenes and create atmosphere. There were many wonderful themes laced throughout the story. The romance was somewhat more believable than the movie (oops, not comparing those two anymore) and I thought the balance of the three suitors and what they represented to Laura was interesting. Laura herself is a very complicated character. We get glimpses of her from a few different perspectives and it is interesting to try and figure out what is false and what is real. Womanhood itself gets examined in this story. Is Laura a doll? Dame? Femme fatale? Society woman? Country girl? Are the women around her grasping, slutty, innocent, or confused? This isn't so much a whodunnit as a examination of human character. I think that is why there is less "shock value" in the twist at the end with this story (or maybe I'm just so seeped in the story line that I failed to be distracted.) The point isn't so much "who killed Laura?" as "Who was Laura?"
I liked the ending. It is so...twisted.
I'd definitely buy and re-read this book.
I came to this book hoping it would be "amazing" "five stars" and "MY NEW FAVORITE THING EVER" and instead I got a solid, very enjoyable, four star read. Am I a little disappointed? Yessss but I doubt I would be if I hadn't seen the movie a million times. I definitely recommend this book. I am glad it exists and I really think it stands on its own feet as an excellent work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is one of my all-time favorite movies and I am now discovering IT IS ALSO A BOOK?!??!?!?! OHHHHHH where has this been all my life! :O
August 8, 2025
Laura
The Library of America has released a two-volume box set, "Women Crime Writers" which includes eight suspense novels written by women, with four books from the 1940's and four books from the 1950's. The collection opens with Vera Caspary's "Laura" published in 1942-1943. Otto Preminger's 1945 film version has become famous and has overshadowed the book. But Caspary's novel is worth reading in its own right. Sarah Weinman, the editor of the LOA volumes, made an inspired choice by opening the collection with "Laura".
"Laura" is a complex multi-dimensional novel set in New York City in the early 1940s. Pigeonholing literature can be deceiving, and it would be a mistake to consider "Laura" a noir novel. It is more akin to a suspense, detective story and features a detective as a primary character. It is also a romance and a story of a woman making her way in the world.
The book revolves around the apparent murder of Laura Hunt, a single woman of 29 who has achieved success working for an advertising agency in New York City. The story is tightly-knit and includes four primary characters, Laura herself, Waldo Lydecker, 52, a pudgy collector of antiques and a renowned columnist, Shelby Carpenter, 32, Laura's fiancé, and Mark McPherson, the young detective assigned to solve Laura's murder. McPherson must solve the murder from a small group of suspects. In the process, he becomes emotionally attracted to the woman whose death he is called upon to resolve.
The book shows depth in its handling of character, particularly of the ambitious and emotionally vulnerable Laura and of the taciturn, self-educated, and deeply romantic detective. Laura, an independent career woman before this became a norm, is sociable and also looking for love. She has been the friend of Lydecker for many years who has harbored romantic designs on her. Carpenter is Laura's junior at the advertising agency and he has a strong tendency to wander to other women.
The story builds slowly with many twists and turns. Lydecker, McPherson, and Laura each tell part of the tale in the first person from their own perspectives. Caspary has an excellent ear for voice and character, with each section of the story revealing a great deal about the teller as well as moving along the plot. The book offers glimpses of 1940's New York City, primarily in upper-class neighborhoods, businesses, and restaurants but with scenes of hardscrabble life in the poorer sections as well.
The LOA volume offers background on the book and its author. "Laura" was first published in serialized form in 1942 before the publication of the book in 1943. It was dramatized and produced on stage before Hollywood bought the movie rights leading to Preminger's film. The book has been in and out of print over the years, while the movie has become a classic. Caspary (1899 -- 1987) led a long eventful life and first became a writer while holding a series of commercial jobs. She wrote several novels before and after "Laura" together with an autobiography. Caspary became a member of the communist party in the 1930s, traveled to Russia, and attempted to resign from the party. Her radicalism and association with communism lead to difficulty in the l1940s and 1950s. There is an element of social criticism in "Laura", but in its writing and understanding of loneliness and the human condition, the book readily transcends ideology. As often happens in literature, the author in "Laura" is wiser than her creed.
"Laura" is a classic American suspense novel worthy of its new place in the Library of America. The LOA kindly sent me a review copy of its new anthology of "Women Crime Writers".
Robin Friedman
The Library of America has released a two-volume box set, "Women Crime Writers" which includes eight suspense novels written by women, with four books from the 1940's and four books from the 1950's. The collection opens with Vera Caspary's "Laura" published in 1942-1943. Otto Preminger's 1945 film version has become famous and has overshadowed the book. But Caspary's novel is worth reading in its own right. Sarah Weinman, the editor of the LOA volumes, made an inspired choice by opening the collection with "Laura".
"Laura" is a complex multi-dimensional novel set in New York City in the early 1940s. Pigeonholing literature can be deceiving, and it would be a mistake to consider "Laura" a noir novel. It is more akin to a suspense, detective story and features a detective as a primary character. It is also a romance and a story of a woman making her way in the world.
The book revolves around the apparent murder of Laura Hunt, a single woman of 29 who has achieved success working for an advertising agency in New York City. The story is tightly-knit and includes four primary characters, Laura herself, Waldo Lydecker, 52, a pudgy collector of antiques and a renowned columnist, Shelby Carpenter, 32, Laura's fiancé, and Mark McPherson, the young detective assigned to solve Laura's murder. McPherson must solve the murder from a small group of suspects. In the process, he becomes emotionally attracted to the woman whose death he is called upon to resolve.
The book shows depth in its handling of character, particularly of the ambitious and emotionally vulnerable Laura and of the taciturn, self-educated, and deeply romantic detective. Laura, an independent career woman before this became a norm, is sociable and also looking for love. She has been the friend of Lydecker for many years who has harbored romantic designs on her. Carpenter is Laura's junior at the advertising agency and he has a strong tendency to wander to other women.
The story builds slowly with many twists and turns. Lydecker, McPherson, and Laura each tell part of the tale in the first person from their own perspectives. Caspary has an excellent ear for voice and character, with each section of the story revealing a great deal about the teller as well as moving along the plot. The book offers glimpses of 1940's New York City, primarily in upper-class neighborhoods, businesses, and restaurants but with scenes of hardscrabble life in the poorer sections as well.
The LOA volume offers background on the book and its author. "Laura" was first published in serialized form in 1942 before the publication of the book in 1943. It was dramatized and produced on stage before Hollywood bought the movie rights leading to Preminger's film. The book has been in and out of print over the years, while the movie has become a classic. Caspary (1899 -- 1987) led a long eventful life and first became a writer while holding a series of commercial jobs. She wrote several novels before and after "Laura" together with an autobiography. Caspary became a member of the communist party in the 1930s, traveled to Russia, and attempted to resign from the party. Her radicalism and association with communism lead to difficulty in the l1940s and 1950s. There is an element of social criticism in "Laura", but in its writing and understanding of loneliness and the human condition, the book readily transcends ideology. As often happens in literature, the author in "Laura" is wiser than her creed.
"Laura" is a classic American suspense novel worthy of its new place in the Library of America. The LOA kindly sent me a review copy of its new anthology of "Women Crime Writers".
Robin Friedman
May 30, 2022
A complicated, cultivated modern woman. 'Concealment, like a worm i' the bud, fed on her damask cheek'.
I've never seen the film based on this book and reading it cold makes it all the better as Caspary has some killer twists up her sleeve. There's also an interesting afterword in this edition which documents how the film softened the character of Laura, making her more of a conventional noir 'dame'. The book is less compromising with the genre.
I can't say much about the plot for fear of spoilers but would say that Caspary takes an oblique approach to noir, and the characters in this book are very knowing in a not-quite-meta way. So the journalist stops the cool police detective from describing Laura as a 'dame', and the detective is himself compared to the usual types who inhabit the genre. Laura, too, is a 'modern' woman (this was written in the 1940s) with a job in an advertising agency where she earns more than her fiancé. Female independence is one of the keynotes of the book.
With the split narrative that allows characters their own voices and the ability to undercut what a previous narrator has said, this is formally interesting (apparently Caspary based it on the narrative structure of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White) and allows for some great reversals and revelations.
Did I see through the plot? After the first jaw-dropping twist, yes, I did - but this is a smart and intriguing slice of noir all the same.
February 8, 2017
Vera Caspary is playing a dangerous game. She's paying lengthy homage to Wilkie Collins' Woman in White, with its shifting stable of unreliable narrators. But she starts with Waldo Lydecker, who is a pretentious boob, and that means your guide for the first 40% or so of the book is annoying.
I thoroughly disliked the book all through this section, because I thought this was the book; I didn't catch the signs that Caspary was in on the joke. When Lydecker says things like "I have been known to shout with equal fervor over the Beethoven Ninth or a penny lollipop," I didn't know whether it was the character or the author who was annoying. When he says that "Yesterday's disapproval had melted like an ice cube surprised by a shower of hot coffee," I don't know whether I'm laughing at or with her.
It gets better. Once other characters start talking, you realize that Lydecker is indeed supposed to be obnoxious; the other voices are - well, different, anyway - and Caspary starts to subvert noir tropes, particularly the femme fatale and the virgin / whore stuff that hardboiled detectives enjoy so much.
It's weird, though, she subverts those tropes partly by falling into different tropes - romance tropes. "He ought to be hardboiled," someone says of the detective. "You'd expect him to be tougher. I don't like his trying to act like a gentleman." Okay, but a gentleman isn't more interesting. Caspary seems to be writing a book that's dressed like noir but plays like save-the-princess wish fulfillment.
So that's it? We take away the sordid fatalism, and we get tea? "Interested in a fellow"? I know this is my fault - I have this aversion to tea in literature - but listen, no one drinks tea while they do something interesting. When tea shows up, you are not at the exciting part. If my choice is between femmes fatale and tea, I'll take the femmes.
I thoroughly disliked the book all through this section, because I thought this was the book; I didn't catch the signs that Caspary was in on the joke. When Lydecker says things like "I have been known to shout with equal fervor over the Beethoven Ninth or a penny lollipop," I didn't know whether it was the character or the author who was annoying. When he says that "Yesterday's disapproval had melted like an ice cube surprised by a shower of hot coffee," I don't know whether I'm laughing at or with her.
It gets better. Once other characters start talking, you realize that Lydecker is indeed supposed to be obnoxious; the other voices are - well, different, anyway - and Caspary starts to subvert noir tropes, particularly the femme fatale and the virgin / whore stuff that hardboiled detectives enjoy so much.
It's weird, though, she subverts those tropes partly by falling into different tropes - romance tropes. "He ought to be hardboiled," someone says of the detective. "You'd expect him to be tougher. I don't like his trying to act like a gentleman." Okay, but a gentleman isn't more interesting. Caspary seems to be writing a book that's dressed like noir but plays like save-the-princess wish fulfillment.
"You don't talk like a detective, either."
"Neither hardboiled nor scientific?"
We laughed. A girl had died...We drank strong tea at the kitchen table like home-folks. Everything was just the way I had felt it would be with her there...interested in a fellow.
So that's it? We take away the sordid fatalism, and we get tea? "Interested in a fellow"? I know this is my fault - I have this aversion to tea in literature - but listen, no one drinks tea while they do something interesting. When tea shows up, you are not at the exciting part. If my choice is between femmes fatale and tea, I'll take the femmes.
November 7, 2021
¿Qué es mejor, leer primero una novela o ver la película en la que se basa? En mi caso, siempre prefiero leer antes la novela y visualizar las cosas a mi modo, después la película me gustará más o menos según se ajuste a mi imaginario. Hacerlo al revés me dificulta disfrutar de la lectura, parece que las imágenes de la película ya condicionan mi interpretación.
Pues afortunadamente éste ha sido para mí el caso con ‘Laura’, yo no he visto la película – la potentísima visión de Otto Preminger – hasta después de terminar el libro. Como consecuencia, he disfrutado de las dos obras, sin entrar en comparaciones que siempre son odiosas, pero creo que ambas son apreciables.
Una cosa bastante extraordinaria que hay que subrayar en el caso del libro, es que se trata de una novela negra en la mejor tradición americana, escrita por una mujer en 1942 y con una protagonista femenina muy carismática.
El detective McPherson de la policía de Nueva York es el encargado de investigar el asesinato de Laura Hunt, una exitosa ejecutiva perteneciente a un mundo de privilegiados al que él no puede aspirar. A través de su mirada reconstruimos la vida de Laura y de las personas que la rodean.
Narrada por varias voces, llena de atmósferas sugerentes, esta breve novela – unas 200 páginas – conserva la capacidad de entretener y sorprender con sus giros de guión, sobre todo si no se ha visto la película.
Pues afortunadamente éste ha sido para mí el caso con ‘Laura’, yo no he visto la película – la potentísima visión de Otto Preminger – hasta después de terminar el libro. Como consecuencia, he disfrutado de las dos obras, sin entrar en comparaciones que siempre son odiosas, pero creo que ambas son apreciables.
Una cosa bastante extraordinaria que hay que subrayar en el caso del libro, es que se trata de una novela negra en la mejor tradición americana, escrita por una mujer en 1942 y con una protagonista femenina muy carismática.
El detective McPherson de la policía de Nueva York es el encargado de investigar el asesinato de Laura Hunt, una exitosa ejecutiva perteneciente a un mundo de privilegiados al que él no puede aspirar. A través de su mirada reconstruimos la vida de Laura y de las personas que la rodean.
Narrada por varias voces, llena de atmósferas sugerentes, esta breve novela – unas 200 páginas – conserva la capacidad de entretener y sorprender con sus giros de guión, sobre todo si no se ha visto la película.
October 21, 2021
3.5 stars
Most of this book's charm for me comes from its vintage. It's so much more fun to read a noir-ish mystery that was published in 1942 than to read one by a present-day author who researched the era and then wrote a book set in 1942. The language used is especially indicative of the time in which it was written. These were the days when "gay" meant happy and lighthearted, and "dick" meant detective. So when Bessie says to Laura, "For once, even if he's a dick, you've met a man," it's not an insult.
I started this book thinking it might be somewhat similar to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe stories. It turned out to be much more tame than that. Vera Caspary doesn't come close to Chandler's gangster vibe, snappy dialogue, and dark atmosphere. But she had her own appealing style. I especially enjoyed the florid verbosity of the Waldo Lydecker character. He's a very fat man, and he describes himself thus:
"While I measure three inches above six feet, the magnificence of my skeleton is hidden by the weight of my flesh."
I won't go into the plot. As much as you need to know is in the publisher's book description. I figured out both "big reveals" shortly before they were divulged, but not because there were any obvious giveaways. More because I have read far too many books in the genre, and little hints just jump out and say "boo!" to me. This is a short, entertaining read which I'd recommend to anyone looking for a bit of a change from more current fiction.
NERD NOTE: I'm always fascinated when I discover some little tidbit about a bygone era. I was quite surprised to read in this book about a phonograph that played ten records, then turned them over and played the other side. I had never heard of one that played ten records, let alone one that flipped them over all by itself!
August 24, 2019
Say what you want about the film, and also the song. I’ve said it-they’re both haunting. But reading is the way to experience this story. And Vera Caspary is a vastly underappreciated writer.
We have what could have been a cliché noir: murder, mystery, a hard-boiled detective, a beautiful woman. But though this was written in the 40’s, it was written by an independent woman--a woman who knew people, knew how to take care of herself, and who wrote from a standpoint of that knowledge.
“Now that I had said the word aloud, I felt freer. I stood up, stretched my legs, blew smoke at the ceiling. I felt that I belonged to myself and could fight my own battles.”
The plot is completely engrossing. The characters are complex. The narrative approach is perfect, and not just for uncovering the conclusion. By using the voice of each of the characters, their flaws are exposed. Noir stories are sometimes black and white (not just literally). Good guys and bad guys. Right and wrong. This one is much more nuanced-each character holds good and bad in themselves. And all this leads to the consideration of larger ideas—ideas of independence and friendship and character.
It’s definitely a page turner, but with more. Lots more.
We have what could have been a cliché noir: murder, mystery, a hard-boiled detective, a beautiful woman. But though this was written in the 40’s, it was written by an independent woman--a woman who knew people, knew how to take care of herself, and who wrote from a standpoint of that knowledge.
“Now that I had said the word aloud, I felt freer. I stood up, stretched my legs, blew smoke at the ceiling. I felt that I belonged to myself and could fight my own battles.”
The plot is completely engrossing. The characters are complex. The narrative approach is perfect, and not just for uncovering the conclusion. By using the voice of each of the characters, their flaws are exposed. Noir stories are sometimes black and white (not just literally). Good guys and bad guys. Right and wrong. This one is much more nuanced-each character holds good and bad in themselves. And all this leads to the consideration of larger ideas—ideas of independence and friendship and character.
It’s definitely a page turner, but with more. Lots more.
February 19, 2019
I remembered the movie from too many years ago to count, with the beautiful Gene Tierney as Laura. As I read, I began to remember the plot, which was a bit of a spoiler for me, but it was a fun read nonetheless. If you do not know the story, it is a terrific piece of noir with a detective that really works!
Now I have the music running through my mind:
Laura is the face in the misty light,
Footsteps that you hear down the hall.
The laugh that floats on a summer night,
That you can never quite recall.
And you see Laura on the train that is passing through.
Those eyes, how familiar they seem.
She gave your very first kiss to you,
That was Laura, but she's only a dream
Now I have the music running through my mind:
Laura is the face in the misty light,
Footsteps that you hear down the hall.
The laugh that floats on a summer night,
That you can never quite recall.
And you see Laura on the train that is passing through.
Those eyes, how familiar they seem.
She gave your very first kiss to you,
That was Laura, but she's only a dream
April 10, 2021
read in March
Between a 4 and a 4.5
full post here:
http://www.crimesegments.com/2021/04/...
Like most crime/mystery fiction I enjoy reading, Laura is a complex, twisty and suspenseful story that moves beyond the realm of standard whodunits into the more literary zone where human nature is put under a microscope. And oh my -- the range of psyches in this book definitely merit close examination. At the center of this story is Laura Hunt and the people in her immediate orbit, and then there's the detective on the case who discovers her only after she's been murdered.
It is mainly through the gaze of each of the men in this novel that we see Laura, but the author has also included a narrative in which we discover her true nature, that of a "modern" and fiercely independent person concerned about being her own woman, having "given so much of everything else," but always withholding herself, with too much to lose otherwise. While the story does eventually reveal the "who," in my opinion, it is the question of why that is much more pertinent: what exactly was it that made Laura a target for murder?
If you've seen the movie then you know the surprises that are in store, and I have tried to keep spoilers out of my post, but the truth is that I could seriously go on forever about this book because there is so much to tell. Unfortunately, that would involve spilling much more about the characters, about the story and about the twists involved throughout, and that's not going to happen here. I did feel that the author sort of tipped her hand in one very telling scene making it easy to figure out the who far ahead of the actual solution, which was a bit disappointing, but in the long run Laura is a definite no-miss, and not just because of the crime element -- it is much more a study in character that brings out a number of issues that remain pertinent today.
Between a 4 and a 4.5
full post here:
http://www.crimesegments.com/2021/04/...
Like most crime/mystery fiction I enjoy reading, Laura is a complex, twisty and suspenseful story that moves beyond the realm of standard whodunits into the more literary zone where human nature is put under a microscope. And oh my -- the range of psyches in this book definitely merit close examination. At the center of this story is Laura Hunt and the people in her immediate orbit, and then there's the detective on the case who discovers her only after she's been murdered.
It is mainly through the gaze of each of the men in this novel that we see Laura, but the author has also included a narrative in which we discover her true nature, that of a "modern" and fiercely independent person concerned about being her own woman, having "given so much of everything else," but always withholding herself, with too much to lose otherwise. While the story does eventually reveal the "who," in my opinion, it is the question of why that is much more pertinent: what exactly was it that made Laura a target for murder?
If you've seen the movie then you know the surprises that are in store, and I have tried to keep spoilers out of my post, but the truth is that I could seriously go on forever about this book because there is so much to tell. Unfortunately, that would involve spilling much more about the characters, about the story and about the twists involved throughout, and that's not going to happen here. I did feel that the author sort of tipped her hand in one very telling scene making it easy to figure out the who far ahead of the actual solution, which was a bit disappointing, but in the long run Laura is a definite no-miss, and not just because of the crime element -- it is much more a study in character that brings out a number of issues that remain pertinent today.
January 22, 2026
The book from which the famous movie was made, both classics. An entertaining noir with lots of twists and turns for our amusement.
October 21, 2011
Rating Clarification: 3.5 Stars
I've loved the movie adaptation of this book for years, and was happy to find the book on which it was based. Often, the chasm between book and silver screen will leave the fan firmly in one camp or the other. Some books, like The Ghost and Mrs Muir, suffer in comparison to their movie counterpart. Other books, like the Somerset Maugham's incredible novel, The Painted Veil, are actually enhanced by their movie twin.
For Vera Caspary's Laura, I would honestly call the enjoyment I found in both mediums more of a draw. The movie is 40's chic; streamlined and mesmerizing in it's appeal. The book has a grittier feel, and adds character depth not found in the movie. Caspary's writing style was wonderful. I found myself re-reading lines over and over just to marvel over their brilliance. She's that good.
I would centainly recommend Laura for fans of the movie or fans of 1940's literature.
I've loved the movie adaptation of this book for years, and was happy to find the book on which it was based. Often, the chasm between book and silver screen will leave the fan firmly in one camp or the other. Some books, like The Ghost and Mrs Muir, suffer in comparison to their movie counterpart. Other books, like the Somerset Maugham's incredible novel, The Painted Veil, are actually enhanced by their movie twin.
For Vera Caspary's Laura, I would honestly call the enjoyment I found in both mediums more of a draw. The movie is 40's chic; streamlined and mesmerizing in it's appeal. The book has a grittier feel, and adds character depth not found in the movie. Caspary's writing style was wonderful. I found myself re-reading lines over and over just to marvel over their brilliance. She's that good.
I would centainly recommend Laura for fans of the movie or fans of 1940's literature.
August 8, 2020
I have promised that I won't give spoilers in my reviews. That makes writing one for this title more challenging than I'd like. The novel is broken into 5 parts and is mostly told in the first person by different narrators. Caspary manages to alter her writing style just enough so that in addition to the story these narrators have to tell, we also are treated to some very good caricature if not actual characterization.
It seems to me there are three basic elements in a novel: writing style, characterization, plot. That is the order of importance to me. Others might have a different order of preference, but to make a novel worth reading there needs to be at least some of each to make time spent worthwhile. I'm not sure, but I don't think every dark novel can be classified as noir. Though each author is unique, noir has a certain cadence to the writing. This novel excels in that category.
There is a murder and this is definitely a plot-driven novel rather than a character-driven one. There is nothing wrong with the plot, it's just that I had more than a strong suspicion of the perpetrator. So, while plot drives the novel, the strength of the writing and the caricatures was the best of it. I have stated before I do not give 5-stars to this genre. I'm afraid that was a false statement. This just barely crosses the 4-/5-star line, but it is there for me.
It seems to me there are three basic elements in a novel: writing style, characterization, plot. That is the order of importance to me. Others might have a different order of preference, but to make a novel worth reading there needs to be at least some of each to make time spent worthwhile. I'm not sure, but I don't think every dark novel can be classified as noir. Though each author is unique, noir has a certain cadence to the writing. This novel excels in that category.
There is a murder and this is definitely a plot-driven novel rather than a character-driven one. There is nothing wrong with the plot, it's just that I had more than a strong suspicion of the perpetrator. So, while plot drives the novel, the strength of the writing and the caricatures was the best of it. I have stated before I do not give 5-stars to this genre. I'm afraid that was a false statement. This just barely crosses the 4-/5-star line, but it is there for me.
February 22, 2024
02/2015
Maybe this would have been better if I didn't know the 1944 film so well. The movie covers the story very thoroughly. Still, I totally enjoyed reading this. I found this copy at a thrift store in California. It's from 1942 and it still has its dust jacket! Amazing (it is a book club edition, and the cover is faded in parts...still pretty cool).
Maybe this would have been better if I didn't know the 1944 film so well. The movie covers the story very thoroughly. Still, I totally enjoyed reading this. I found this copy at a thrift store in California. It's from 1942 and it still has its dust jacket! Amazing (it is a book club edition, and the cover is faded in parts...still pretty cool).
February 10, 2013
THE GRAND ADVENTURE OF VERA CASPARY (My February column at Bookslut)
In Vera Caspary's absorbing autobiography The Secrets of Grown-Ups (1979) recounting her life as a writer, she avows, "This has been the century of The Woman and I know myself fortunate to have been part of the revolution. In another generation, perhaps the next, equality will be taken for granted. Those who come after us may find it easier to assert independence, but will miss the grand adventure of having been born a woman in this century of change."
Born in Chicago in 1898 to a middle-class secular Jewish family, Caspary was inspired as a young girl to become a writer when she met her friend's aunt, a published author. On finishing high school, Caspary decided not to go to college but to seek a writing job, and wound up a stenographer. Soon she was writing the instructions for a mail-order course for the Sergei Marinoff School of Classic Dancing, though she knew nothing about ballet. Further assignments included composing a screenwriting course, which would prove helpful later in her career. She wrote for ad agencies, niche magazines, even wrote copy for The Rodent Extermination League of America. When she had saved enough money, she quit these sorts of jobs in order to stay at home and write "something meaningful." The result was a novel she never published.
In the mid-1920s Caspary accepted a job in New York City writing for Dance Lovers Magazine. She took a studio in Greenwich Village, and reveled in Bohemian life at a time "when sexual inhibition was to be avoided like pregnancy and a repressed libido shunned like a dose of clap." In her hard-boiled prose style, she describes those boom years before the crash: "Young wives measured devotion by the inches of diamond bracelets and kept women spurned mink to wrap themselves in chinchilla."
Never having much money, when the depression came, she didn't have far to fall. Others fared worse, and she guiltily watched much of the population sink into destitution. Many blamed capitalism. Caspary flirted with communism, joining the party under a pseudonym. In 1939, she traveled to the Motherland: "I had gone to Russia to see how people lived in a world that to the Daily Worker was paradise, to the Daily News hell." She left disillusioned with the Red promise.
Caspary moved to London toward the end of the war to be with her lover, exiled Austrian film producer Isidor "Igee" Goldsmith. She describes her experiences, as an American, of rationing, air raids, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Summoned to Los Angeles for a screenwriting job, she went and enjoyed a lucrative career there until she was gray-listed during the McCarthy era. At the age of fifty, she married Igee, the love of her life, and they split their time between Europe and California.
Throughout Caspary wrote -- articles, stories, plays, screenplays, and novels -- with varying success. In Secrets, she confesses: "I've known rejection enough to make a sane person quit but, having known the raptures and torments of the storyteller, I can no more stop writing than stop breathing."
In her work, Caspary's chief thematic interest is in questioning stereotypes and assumptions. She peered into a life, a relationship, a family from an angle that would reveal alternative ways of seeing, of being. Her first published novel, The White Girl (1929), is about an African-American woman who moves from the south to Chicago, where she passes as white. Music in the Street (1930) was set in a working girl's residence. She adapted it for the stage as Blind Mice, featuring an unprecedented all-female cast. The play formed the basis for the 1931 film Working Girls directed by Dorothy Arzner. Caspary turned her Cheeveresque short story "Suburbs" into the 1932 film The Night of June 13th. That year she published her magnum opus Thicker than Water, a 425-page autobiographical saga chronicling the trials and tribulations, conundrums and prejudices of a Sephardic Jewish family living in Chicago in the early twentieth century.
By the end of her career (she died in 1987), Caspary had written eighteen novels, countless stories, plays, screenplays, and treatments from which twenty-four movies were made, including Joseph Mankiewicz's Letter to Three Wives (1949), Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953), and George Cukor's Les Girls (1957). With nearly all of Vera Caspary's work now out of print, she is most remembered in connection with Otto Preminger's 1944 classic noir film Laura, based on her eponymous novel.
Caspary's psycho-thriller Laura (1942, republished in 2005 by Feminist Press) is a pitch-perfect detective yarn that manipulates the tropes of the genre to explore the intersection of class, crime, and sexual politics. Her plot twists are ingenious, her characters expertly drawn, and her prose style as refined and faceted as the best of Raymond Chandler. Told from the viewpoints of multiple narrators, the subject is ostensibly the brutal murder of Laura Hunt, a highly successful advertising executive loved and respected by all; but what the dour, reluctant NYPD Detective Mark McPherson ends up investigating is Laura's life. In the process he falls in love with a dead woman. Via the multi-perspective narrative, Caspary leads her reader down dark alleys, around blind corners, through the threats and hazards a woman must confront in negotiating her way through a male world.
In the film version, Caspary was outraged by Preminger's characterization of Laura as a dithering ninny whose power lay in how men perceived her, symbolized by Laura's portrait, omnipresent in the film. (In the book, the portrait is much less prominent and suggests Laura's strong individualism.) Preminger famously called Caspary's Laura "a nonentity with no sex." Caspary responded, "Do you mean she never got money out of men or mink or diamonds? That doesn't mean a girl's sexy, Mr. Preminger, it just means she's shrewd. My Laura knew how to love, enjoyed more than one lover, and enjoyed her lovers lustily." The feud culminated in an infamous shouting match between director and writer at The Stork Club.
Read the rest of the review at www.bookslut.com
In Vera Caspary's absorbing autobiography The Secrets of Grown-Ups (1979) recounting her life as a writer, she avows, "This has been the century of The Woman and I know myself fortunate to have been part of the revolution. In another generation, perhaps the next, equality will be taken for granted. Those who come after us may find it easier to assert independence, but will miss the grand adventure of having been born a woman in this century of change."
Born in Chicago in 1898 to a middle-class secular Jewish family, Caspary was inspired as a young girl to become a writer when she met her friend's aunt, a published author. On finishing high school, Caspary decided not to go to college but to seek a writing job, and wound up a stenographer. Soon she was writing the instructions for a mail-order course for the Sergei Marinoff School of Classic Dancing, though she knew nothing about ballet. Further assignments included composing a screenwriting course, which would prove helpful later in her career. She wrote for ad agencies, niche magazines, even wrote copy for The Rodent Extermination League of America. When she had saved enough money, she quit these sorts of jobs in order to stay at home and write "something meaningful." The result was a novel she never published.
In the mid-1920s Caspary accepted a job in New York City writing for Dance Lovers Magazine. She took a studio in Greenwich Village, and reveled in Bohemian life at a time "when sexual inhibition was to be avoided like pregnancy and a repressed libido shunned like a dose of clap." In her hard-boiled prose style, she describes those boom years before the crash: "Young wives measured devotion by the inches of diamond bracelets and kept women spurned mink to wrap themselves in chinchilla."
Never having much money, when the depression came, she didn't have far to fall. Others fared worse, and she guiltily watched much of the population sink into destitution. Many blamed capitalism. Caspary flirted with communism, joining the party under a pseudonym. In 1939, she traveled to the Motherland: "I had gone to Russia to see how people lived in a world that to the Daily Worker was paradise, to the Daily News hell." She left disillusioned with the Red promise.
Caspary moved to London toward the end of the war to be with her lover, exiled Austrian film producer Isidor "Igee" Goldsmith. She describes her experiences, as an American, of rationing, air raids, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Summoned to Los Angeles for a screenwriting job, she went and enjoyed a lucrative career there until she was gray-listed during the McCarthy era. At the age of fifty, she married Igee, the love of her life, and they split their time between Europe and California.
Throughout Caspary wrote -- articles, stories, plays, screenplays, and novels -- with varying success. In Secrets, she confesses: "I've known rejection enough to make a sane person quit but, having known the raptures and torments of the storyteller, I can no more stop writing than stop breathing."
In her work, Caspary's chief thematic interest is in questioning stereotypes and assumptions. She peered into a life, a relationship, a family from an angle that would reveal alternative ways of seeing, of being. Her first published novel, The White Girl (1929), is about an African-American woman who moves from the south to Chicago, where she passes as white. Music in the Street (1930) was set in a working girl's residence. She adapted it for the stage as Blind Mice, featuring an unprecedented all-female cast. The play formed the basis for the 1931 film Working Girls directed by Dorothy Arzner. Caspary turned her Cheeveresque short story "Suburbs" into the 1932 film The Night of June 13th. That year she published her magnum opus Thicker than Water, a 425-page autobiographical saga chronicling the trials and tribulations, conundrums and prejudices of a Sephardic Jewish family living in Chicago in the early twentieth century.
By the end of her career (she died in 1987), Caspary had written eighteen novels, countless stories, plays, screenplays, and treatments from which twenty-four movies were made, including Joseph Mankiewicz's Letter to Three Wives (1949), Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953), and George Cukor's Les Girls (1957). With nearly all of Vera Caspary's work now out of print, she is most remembered in connection with Otto Preminger's 1944 classic noir film Laura, based on her eponymous novel.
Caspary's psycho-thriller Laura (1942, republished in 2005 by Feminist Press) is a pitch-perfect detective yarn that manipulates the tropes of the genre to explore the intersection of class, crime, and sexual politics. Her plot twists are ingenious, her characters expertly drawn, and her prose style as refined and faceted as the best of Raymond Chandler. Told from the viewpoints of multiple narrators, the subject is ostensibly the brutal murder of Laura Hunt, a highly successful advertising executive loved and respected by all; but what the dour, reluctant NYPD Detective Mark McPherson ends up investigating is Laura's life. In the process he falls in love with a dead woman. Via the multi-perspective narrative, Caspary leads her reader down dark alleys, around blind corners, through the threats and hazards a woman must confront in negotiating her way through a male world.
In the film version, Caspary was outraged by Preminger's characterization of Laura as a dithering ninny whose power lay in how men perceived her, symbolized by Laura's portrait, omnipresent in the film. (In the book, the portrait is much less prominent and suggests Laura's strong individualism.) Preminger famously called Caspary's Laura "a nonentity with no sex." Caspary responded, "Do you mean she never got money out of men or mink or diamonds? That doesn't mean a girl's sexy, Mr. Preminger, it just means she's shrewd. My Laura knew how to love, enjoyed more than one lover, and enjoyed her lovers lustily." The feud culminated in an infamous shouting match between director and writer at The Stork Club.
Read the rest of the review at www.bookslut.com
November 21, 2021
Laura Hunt was shot as she opened her apartment door in New York City, and detective Mark McPherson was sent to investigate. Laura was a beautiful, independent woman who fascinated the people who loved her. Using multiple narrators, author Vera Caspary gives us psychological profiles of the main characters and their relationships. This excellent crime story is a classic with interesting characters and a twist in the middle of the book.
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