Laura often is identified, controversially, as a noir novel, and the lead character as a femme fatale. ( April 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style.

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Diane Redfern, a struggling young model and the actual murder victim.

Shelby Carpenter, Laura's fiance, an undistinguished philanderer.

Waldo Lydecker, an obese middle-aged writer with expensive tastes and Laura's former lover.

Mark McPherson, the young homicide detective assigned to the Laura Hunt (later the Diane Redfern) murder case.

Laura Hunt, a smart and beautiful New York advertiser whose career is thriving.

The novel has some autobiographical elements Caspary, like Laura, was an independent woman who earned her living as an advertiser and who struggled to balance career and romance. When Laura turns out to be very much alive, however, she becomes the prime suspect. As he learns more about Laura, Mark – not the most sentimental of men – begins to fall in love with her memory. These individual stories all revolve around the apparent murder of the title character, a successful New York advertiser killed in the doorway of her apartment with a shotgun blast that obliterated her face.ĭetective Mark McPherson, assigned to the case, begins investigating the two men who were closest to Laura: her former lover, a narcissistic middle-aged writer named Waldo Lydecker, and her fiance, the philandering Shelby Carpenter. Like Wilkie Collins' novel The Woman in White (1859), Laura is narrated in the first person by several alternating characters. In 2015, it was included as part of the Library of America's Women Crime Writers omnibus collection. An edition from Feminist Press became available in 2006. I Books released an edition in 2000, billing it as a 'lost classic ' however, this edition is out of print. Since its original publication, the novel has been reissued many times.

Laura achieved an international readership and has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese and Dutch, and it was released as an Armed Services Edition for the American military during World War II. In 1946, Caspary sold the story for a fourth time, this time co-writing a theatrical version with George Sklar. Houghton Mifflin republished Laura in book form the next year afterwards, Caspary sold the film rights to Twentieth Century Fox, resulting in a 1944 hit movie starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. Originally, Laura ran in Colliers from October to November 1942 as a seven-part serial titled Ring Twice for Laura. It is her best known work, and was adapted into a popular film in 1944, with Gene Tierney in the title role. Laura (1943) is a detective novel by Vera Caspary.

Laura by vera caspary