Laura by Caspary, Vera - 1943

Laura (1943, Houghton Mifflin BCE W/DJ)Caspary, Vera LAURA, 1943 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN BCE Used. Good Condition/ Acceptable Original Laura/glass globe dust jacket. Wartime Edition. Copper brown boards with black titling. Deckled page edges, light foxing. Dust jacket is worn, taped, Has been mended and cleaned up a bit since this photo was taken. "Laura is an elegant novel about outwardly elegant people—a book, in Julian Symons's words, "of unusual wit and style," and one of its pleasures is providing an opportunity to vicariously experience in rich detail an upscale 1940s Manhattan of supper clubs, cocktail parties, concert halls, and antique shops, even as that bubble world is turned inside out by a brutal murder. The book's central figure—an independent woman much like Vera Caspary herself—is seen from different angles by men with varying designs on her before she finally is permitted to speak in her own disarmingly straightforward voice. Otto Preminger's celebrated film version, and the familiar song derived from David Raskin's haunting theme music, have given Laura an enduring cultural presence, yet Caspary's novel remains under-appreciated for its singularly nuanced use of the mystery form as a medium for social and psychological portraiture."