Laura

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943. First edition of Vera Caspary's romantic psychothriller, an international bestseller that inspired the blockbuster 1944 film starring Gene Tierney. Caspary's legacy of strong, independent female characters was most realized in the fiercely self-possessed Laura, an advertising executive who is alternately considered a murderer and victim: "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.'" Caspary was herself a formidable woman, who started her prolific writing career early. Her dust jacket biography is as entertaining as the novel itself: "Vera Caspary has been around. . . . A genius in selling things by mail, she has distributed in this way cold cream, milking machines, dancing, singing, one-pipe furnaces, rat virus, Zane Grey, Sax Rohmer, heredity, and sex." Recognized as a major contribution to the suspense genre, Laura was listed as a Haycraft-Queen cornerstone for 1943, the definitive collectors' list of landmark works in detective, crime, and mystery fiction. A bright copy of a scarce book, in original dust jacket. Single volume, measuring 8 x 5.5 inches: [6], 237, [1]. Original blue cloth stamped in red, original unclipped color pictorial dust jacket designed by Bip Pares. Offsetting to endpapers, top edge spotted, jacket professionally restored.