Before I picked up this volume, I've only heard the names of one of the 4 authors collected here - Dorothy B. Hughes - and even with her, I am not sure I had read anything by her. I like the period and I like the genre in the period so that is a curious oversight (which has a lot to do with what is kept in print - if you had asked me a few months ago to name 4 female suspense novelists from the 1940s, I probably would not have been able to name even Hughes).

The 4 novels collected here may be in the same genre but they are very different from each other. And while all of them have dated elements, they are no more dated than anything published in the 40s.

Laura by Vera Caspary (originally published in serialized form in 1942 and in a book form in 1943) uses multiple narrators to tell us the story of a murder. Each part is narrated by someone new thus adding new pieces to the puzzle. The murder victim is presumed to be Laura, an advertiser who was not exactly the meek woman everyone expected her to be. Her face was completely destroyed when she was shot - but based on where the body was and what she wore, everyone is pretty sure in her identity. And this is where this novel probably read very differently 80 years ago. These days the destroyed face makes you expect a wrong identification - it had become a cliche in the genre (and a clumsy one at that for the most part). So a lot of the surprise in the novel is lost - when Laura shows up alive and well, it felt expected. And yet, the novel managed to surprise me. Giving one of the voices to the detective assigned to the case who proceeds to fall in love with the woman he believes to be dead gave the story the grittiness it needed.

Of course the format was not new even back then - Wilkie Collins used the same narrative style in "The Woman in White". What makes the format work is managing to create believable voices and keeping track of who knows what when (and who does not know what when). Capary pulls it off - she even managed to surprise me with the end - not because it was illogical but because there were more obvious (and a lot less satisfying) endings possible.

The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis (published in 1946) won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel in its year (it was only the second year for the award). Kevin Boyle, a professor who likes women a bit too much, manages to get himself killed and the novel follows the investigation of that murder. The college president is too worried about the reputation of the college so the job ends up being done by an undergraduate, Kate, and her newspaper reporter friend (who spends half of the book trying to get Kate). It is a somewhat psychedelic novel - at different times it is unclear who is breaking down and who is faking a break down and at various times different characters, from both genders, end up hysterical. While I can see why it got the award in its year, it was my least favorite of the 4 novels in this omnibus (which does not mean that I disliked it). Eustis plays with the expected norms for the genders, bending them out of shape and having characters behave as one would expect a member of the other genre to behave. It feels almost caricaturish in places but then I am looking at it 80 years later.

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (1947) is as noir as a novel can be. The story is told by an ex-airman named Dix Steele had ended up in LA after the war. He connects with a friend from the service who happens to be a policeman now, chasing after a serial killer. And the game of cat and mouse starts - because our Dix had been spending some of his nights strangling women. It becomes clear to the reader early in the novel so one can appreciate the complexity of the novel. Having Dix narrate the story was a brilliant choice - we know he is an unreliable narrator but finding the line between him lying and him not knowing things and having him surprised by events a reader can see coming was delightful. Psychological suspense is a popular genre and there are a lot of modern writers who excel in it - and this novel is probably better than most I had read in the genre.

In The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1947), we meet Lucia Holley - a mother of two, with a husband deployed overseas (the novel is set during WWII), living with her father and children (and the African American housekeeper Sybil) in a big house, away from the big city. Both her father and her daughter are strong-willed and willing to push Lucia as much as possible and trying to deal with a household in the middle of the war shortages is stressing on its own. To find herself in the middle of a blackmail scandal, with a dead body showing up and a man she may be falling in love with despite his past being around, was the last thing she expected. Except that she cannot have the scandal so the timid housewife decides she will do anything she can to save her family - without telling them what she is doing. The novel could have descended into parody but it never happens. And somewhere in the middle of all that, we get to learn a lot more about Sybil and two women who had depended on each other anyway, get closer and closer to a friendship - as unlikely as this may be on the surface.

All 4 novels had been adapted into movies (and some of them in radio-plays as well). I had not watched any of the movies - all 4 stories were new to me. And I greatly enjoyed them. None of them is perfect but none of them feel so dated so that it becomes unreadable either.

Library of America has a companion volume with 4 more novels (from the 1950s) and I plan to read them soon - and then go chasing more of these early stories. LOA put together a site for the series of 2 omnibuses who has (among other things) a chronology of suspense novels by women (http://womencrime.loa.org/?page_id=367) and their movies adaptations (http://womencrime.loa.org/?page_id=189), reviews/appreciations for each of the 8 novels by a currently working in the genre female author (with one exception - Charles Finch for The Horizontal Man - which is oddly appropriate considering the novel) and Sarah Weinman's introduction to the series and the genre (http://womencrime.loa.org/?page_id=187) which LOA decided not to print in the books so if you want it, you need to read it online. ( )

These were four thoroughly enjoyable mysteries from women authors of the 40s. What is interesting to me, is that they wrote in a sexist manner; like a man would! I suppose they wouldn't have been published if they didn't, but . . . For example, they all used the tiresome"the man" and "the girl," as if every woman character is a 12-year-old girl. ( )

Read Laura by V. Caspary. Not what I expected having seen parts of and read a little about the movie. Shifting POV was interesting. Again though, it all seemed pretty unlikely.

Four excellent mystery/crime novels with diverse plots and styles.
Laura by Vera Caspery
The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes
The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

I will not summarize the plots since that is well-done in the review by rabbitprincess. (I will, however, add that along with the mystery element, The Horizontal Man presents a satiric picture of life at a small college – apparently based on the author’s experience at Smith).

None of the authors is well known today but I think all four of the novels could be considered classics. I had read In a Lonely Place before (In fact, after reading it, I was bemoaning the difficulty of finding other books by Dorothy B. Hughes and someone on LT pointed me to this volume) but I enjoyed reading the other three together. It was fun to compare and contrast them. I definitely recommend the volume for anyone who likes to read the older noir-ish mysteries or is looking for something different. I plan on reading a second collection Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950’s.

Although all four novels were written during or just after WWII the war figures in only two of them. In The Blank Wall, the protagonist is the wife of a serviceman who is overseas. She lacks confidence and struggles to maintain a household with two teenage children, her father and a savvy housekeeper. Life becomes much more complicated when a body turns up in her boat house. She is thrust in a world of blackmailers and gangsters, but finds the strength to do what she must to protect her family. I thought the ending was very surprising. In In a Lonely Place, the war enters only indirectly but plays a significant role in the plot. Two of the characters were in the service together in Great Britain. Nevertheless, Hughes’ portrait of post-war LA is one of the strengths of the novel and has been compared with that of Dashiell Hammett.

Three of the novels were made into films. The Blank Wall as The Reckless Moment (1949) with James Mason and Joan Bennett. Laura (1944) was directed by Otto Preminger with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price. In a Lonely Place (1950) was directed by Nicholas Ray with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. (Although Grahame won an Academy award for Best Supporting Actress in the Bad and the Beautiful in 1953 she had quite a tempestuous career and personal life. One of her four marriages and divorces was with the director of In a Lonely Place, Nicholas Ray. Grahame, played by Annette Benning, is the subject of the recent movie Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool). ( )

This is a great collection, well worth reading if you are interested in hardboiled detective fiction and want to look beyond the usual "classics".

Warning: these reviews may contain spoilers.

Laura, by Vera Caspary

This book starts off very well, with an excellently rendered voice for newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker, describing the circumstances of his dear protégée Laura's murder. However, once the dramatic twist occurs (that Laura was not really murdered, but it was someone who was borrowing her apartment), the book kind of lags a bit. It does pick up toward the last two parts of the book, but the middle was a bit less exciting. Still, it was an enjoyable read and very effectively narrated with multiple perspectives (Waldo, detective Mark McPherson, Laura's fiancé Shelby Carpenter). I would definitely recommend it to fans of pulp fiction or those who can't get their hands on a copy of the movie. Now I have to see the movie! (3.5/5)

The Horizontal Man, by Helen Eustis

A popular English professor at a women's college is murdered, and a young freshman with a crush on him has a breakdown and confesses to his murder. But did she actually kill him? Kate Innes, a senior at the college, and Jack Donelly, a reporter looking for the big scoop, take up the case, while the rest of the college attempts to deal with the aftermath.

This book has a hair-raising atmosphere. I began reading it right before bed one day and had such a terrible nightmare that I had to start reading the book during daylight hours. But most of the suspense is kept to the beginning and the latter third of the book, especially when the angle of the person tormenting another English professor with cruel journal entries is brought in. I could not predict whodunnit and could not read fast enough once the dénouement began. The self-appointed detectives don't actually solve the case, but they're not presented as the stars of the show anyway, so that was not a problem for me.

Because this book was written in the 1940s, there are a couple of wince-inducing elements for modern readers: Jack Donelly's rather brusque courtship of Kate (with occasional needless comments about her weight -- she's usually described as fat or "roly-poly" when she is probably only "less skinny than a beanpole"), and a discussion of then-current psychological thinking on homosexuality and gender identity, particularly with regard to the mix of "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics in an individual.

Overall, this is probably worth reading if you pick up the omnibus or find the book on its own in a used-book store. (3.5/5)

In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes

The women of Los Angeles are on edge: there's a serial killer going around late at night, usually attacking women on their own as they wait for a bus or depart one. Unlike the LAPD, the reader knows whodunnit: former airman Dickson "Dix" Steele, who spends his days hanging out in a friend's apartment and allegedly writing a novel. Steele's best friend from his army days is one of the detectives on the case, so Steele takes the opportunity to insert himself into the investigation to see how close they're getting. Will his friend clue in before it's too late?

This is considered an early portrait of a serial killer, and a creepy one it is. But unlike most serial killer novels today, we don't see too much of the actual killing, and the killer does not spend much time meticulously plotting his victims' degradation. In this respect it is "easier" to read, because the violence is not in your face, but leaving the details to the reader's imagination can make them even creepier than what the author could produce. Hughes' writing sends prickles down the spine, and the tension builds as the case progresses. The ending is a sharp shock and winds down abruptly. No "after action, villain analysis" here.

This is a good book to read for anyone interested in classic noir. (4/5)

The Blank Wall, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Lucia Holly is a mother of two living in what seems to be New York state during the Second World War. Her two children, her father, and the family maid have rented a house in the country while her husband is overseas. Her daughter has become quasi-romantically involved with a cad, but matters become even worse when the cad is killed on their property. How will Lucia deal with the situation and the aftermath when the truth comes out, as it surely must?

The summary of this book nearly made me return the omnibus it appeared in unfinished; it was coming due soon and the summary didn't sound that interesting. But the murder occurs before the second chapter is out and things get stranger and tenser from there. Bonus points for references to Montreal and Quebec, and the less common choice of setting for a WW2-era novel. Lucia felt very real; I appreciated her flashes of resourcefulness while simultaneously rolling my eyes at her fretting over what her children would think of her. The author also managed to fake me out in a couple of locations, doing what I did not expect. Others might be able to predict what happens, but I was pleased to be thwarted in my expectations.

Recommended if you come across it. (4/5)

Rating of the collection as a whole: 3.75 average, rounded up to 4 ( )