The book begins with a police investigation of the recent
death of a New York woman, murdered in her apartment by a
shotgun blast in the face. The book is a psychological
mystery and, rather than concentrating on thorough and
intelligent examination of the evidence, the detective more
or less talks his way through to the end, dining and drinking
and chatting with the suspects, exploring nuances in
personality and bouncing them off of alibis and
motives.
Aside from discovering the murderer, the plot explores the
disintegration of a woman's love for her fiance and the
blossoming romance between her and the police detective.
There is a dearth of clues, and when they do show up, they
are inconsistent and contradictory. It is decided early on
that the murder weapon is a sawed-off shotgun, and later a
shotgun is discovered which is not sawed-off but is still
considered as the potential murder weapon.
LAURA has been suggested as an early noir by a female author,
but I didn't think there was enough sweat and desperation to
award it the noir tag. The blurb on the cover called it a
novel of suspense, but unless one sat on the edge of one's
seat waiting to see what they ordered for dessert, there
wasn't much of that, either. The book is not badly written
and the characters are well-done, but if you are looking for
hardboiled or noir, keep on looking.
Vera Caspary was born in Chicago in 1899 and was educated in
public schools. After high school she took a secretarial
course that graduated into her professional writing career.
Her first novel, THE WHITE GIRL, was published in 1929 and
achieved some success. A play she cowrote with actress
Winifred Lenihan led to a job in Hollywood writing
screenplays. An autobiographical novel, THICKER THAN WATER,
came out in 1932.
Aside from short stories, stage plays, and screenplays, from
1946 to 1971 Caspary managed to write nine crime novels, with
Laura in 1949 being her most notable. A common theme running
through the novels contained a successful and independent
career woman drawn to some loser guy. LAURA was made into a
successful movie with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. I have
heard that the movie is a classic Film Noir.
Caspary married producer Goldsmith in 1949. Due to her
politics being less than emphatic, she was only greylisted
during the McCarthy era, and still managed to work. She died
in 1987.
miker
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