Laura by Vera Caspary

Send us Fan MailTea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written and interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.LAURA by Vera Caspary (1943) is a sophisticated mystery that blends romance and psychological intrigue. Told through shifting perspectives, it follows a detective investigating the murder of a glamorous ad exec. It remains a cornerstone of noir fiction.Otto Preminger’s 1944 film version is also a stunner. The American Film Institute named it one of the 10 best mystery films of all time.Get your copy of Laura and all of our History of Mystery book selections here!Watch clips from our conversations with guests!Waldo Lydecker in Laura by Vera CasparyHe met the “lovely child” eight years earlier when she tried to get him to endorse a Byron fountain pen. He describes her as a “fawn and fawn-like,” a “Bambi.”He’s an omniscient narrator and interpreter. He describes scenes he never saw and dialogues he never heard. “My written dialogue will have more clarity, compatness, and essence of character than their spoken lines, for I am able to edit while I write, whereas they carried on their conversations in a loose and pointless fashion with no sense of form or crisis in the building of their scenes” (19).Waldo saw everything through the lens of his own emotions. He thought of Laura as a perfect innocent protégée, Shelby as the false hero, and Mark as a little boy he could toy with. McPherson about Waldo: “You’re smooth all right, but you’ve got nothing to say” (9).The restaurant he and Laura dined at is Montagnino’s. Slum smells mix with the smells of luscious Italian food and a rising storm. Waldo and Mark eat mussels cooked with mustard greens in a chianti, along with a chicken fried in olive oil, laid on a bed of yellow taglierini, garlanded with mushrooms and red peppers. They drink wine Lacrymae Christi (“Christ’s tear”) (produced on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, it’s the nearest equivalent of the wine drunk by ancient Romans).Waldo sees in Claudius’s window a duplicate of the vase made of mercury glass that he had given Laura. Learning the piece has been sold, he breaks it. “He stood in the rain, looking back at Claudius’s shop and smiling. Almost as if he’d got the vase anyway” (105).At the end of Laura by Vera Caspary, in the ambulance and at the hospital, Waldo keeps talking about himself in the third person. “He was like a hero a boy had always worshipped” (171).Detective Mark McPherson“A two-timing dame gets murdered in her flat. So what? … I’m a workingman, I’ve got hours like everyone else. And if you expect me to work overtime on this third-class mystery, you’re thinking of a couple other fellows” (8). Soon thereafter, Waldo sees the light on in Laura’s apartment. “I knew that a young man who had once scorned overtime had given his heart to a job” (39).He walks with a limp from a shootout (The Siege of Babylon, Long Island). How he lives: “The steel furniture in my bedroom reminded me of a dentist’s office. There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the room” (65). Waldo thinks he’s a misogynist and thinks “his heart was guarded” (35).A female reporter uses female tricks, saying, “I shouldn’t mind being murdered half so much … if you were the detective seeking clues to my private life” (35).Linden BotanicalsWe sell the world’s healthiest herbal teas and extracts.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showhttps://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxinhttps://www.teatonicandtoxin.comStay mysterious...