Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s (LOA #268) / Library of America Women Crime Writers Collection Bd.1 (ePub)

A landmark collection of four brilliant novels by the female pioneers of crime fiction-women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline

Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today's bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of their mid-century predecessors is largely unknown. Turning from the mean streets of the hardboiled school, these groundbreaking female novelists found the roots of fear and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work-influential in its day and still vibrant today-is long overdue for discovery.

Edited by The Real Lolita author Sarah Weinman, this collection gathers four classic crime novels from the 1940s: Vera Caspary's famous career girl mystery, Laura; Helen Eustis's intricate academic thriller, The Horizontal Man; Dorothy B. Hughes's terrifyingly intimate portrait of a serial killer, In a Lonely Place; and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall, in which a wartime wife is forced to take extreme measures when her family is threatened. Together, these underappreciated works reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage of today's leading crime writers.

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