The Murder in the Stork Club and Other Mysteries

Vera Caspary (1889-1987), playwright and novelist, is best remembered for the novel which led to the great Otto Preminger movie, Laura, but she also wrote novellas and novelettes which combined mystery and suspense with an awareness of gender and class issues. Working-class sleuths in high-class settings (like New York's famed Stork Club), sexual and work-place tension, Nazi spies during the Second World War, complex characters - all these elements were combined in Caspary's writing with an impeccable smoothness in plotting. In one story, she even has a gathering of suspects at the denouement in the tradition of Agatha Christie. The Murder in the Stork Club and Other Mysteries is edited by Caspary-expert Barbara Emrys. It is the 29th in Crippen & Landru's "Lost Classics Series" -- previously uncollected stories by great authors of the past who specialized in traditional mysteries