****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.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in
length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are
printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
