Laura

Laura, by Vera Caspary and George Sklar, is one of the great whodunits. We’re in New York in the 1940’s. There’s still an el on 2nd Avenue. It’s summer and the baseball season is in full swing. A woman is found dead in an Upper East Side apartment and a detective is sitting alone with a phonograph playing Muggsy Spanier. Beautifully written, this is the New York mystery that seems to define the genre. Almost everyone is a suspect and constantly we are taken off guard by the turn of events. Nothing is what it seems to be. The tone is fast, furious, wise-cracking, and elegant! You can smell the hot night air that turns electric.