Discovering Vera
Caspary’s fiction has been a highlight of the past few years. I suppose you
could say she wrote books that might be conveniently classed as suspense,
mystery, detective, crime, noir, or none of these. They are really psychological
studies that defy categorisation. What Vera’s books tend to have in common are strong,
independent, career women, with some unusual themes, such as PMT-related
depression. Anyway, Vera had a great way with words. To use a phrase of her
own: “To write well is to write clearly.” And she did.
Rather like her contemporary Dorothy B. Hughes with In A Lonely Place, Vera’s most well-known work Laura is available in a handsome edition as part of The Feminist Press’ Femmes Fatales series. And, yes, it is the book that spawned the classic Otto Preminger-directed film noir, memorably starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. But then Laura has been a magazine serial, a play, a novel, a film, a song. All of which suggests Lionel Blair and Una Stubbs (I nearly wrote Baines there!) effervescing in the fondly remembered Give Us A Clue.
