Laura Audiobook By Vera Caspary cover art

Laura

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Laura

By: Vera Caspary
Narrated by: Christian Rummel, Eileen Stevens, Oliver Wyman, L. J. Ganser
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Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charms, not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Laura's death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power.

Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film, the greatest noir romance of all time. Vera Caspary's equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters - including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale.

©1942, 1943 Vera Caspary (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Classics Genre Fiction Hard-Boiled Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Mystery Romance Fiction Suspense Exciting

Critic reviews

Top 100 Mysteries of All Time (Mystery Writers of America)
100 Must-Read Thrillers (International Thriller Writers)

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The first third of the story had my attention and was eager to hear more. But after that I was lost in the phycological bantering.

Diverse Personality’s

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I love the movie, but the book is so much better! A deep psychological crime novel, and, despite its age, neither its plot nor its language is outdated. Terrific read.

Wonderful Classic Mystery!

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If you could sum up Laura in three words, what would they be?

Beautiful, trusting, intelligent

Which scene was your favorite?

Dinner scene between Mark and Waldo.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes it was. However, I used it as an incentive to take my morning walk while listening. For that reason, I keprt my listen to about an hour each day.

Any additional comments?

I purchased the book because I always enjoyed the movie and thought I would just relive that experience. It was, however, much more with twists and turns not in the movie.It kept my interest, even though I knew the basic story plot.

Loved the movie, enjoyed the book even more

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This is the story well known from the movies--though there are subtle differences. I love the idea of different narrators for the different sections of the story, and overall the narrators did great work. I would question why Shelby Carpenter has no accent when that actor narrates his part and a mildly Southern one in Mark's last section, but despite these small inconsistencies, this was an excellent listening experience.

Not just the great film

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I have always loved the 1940's movie of Laura with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews and several years ago it prompted me to read the original novel, which is a bit dated but still quite a good read. This is a very creditable audio version. The novel is told from several different points of view and it works well with the multiple readers. My only small criticisms are that Laura's voice is a bit more girlish than the one I hear in my head when I read the novel and Shelby didn't have any trace of a Southern accent. But Waldo Lydecker and Mark McPherson are perfect. I recommend this. I'm already on my second listen.

I like this a lot.

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Not as good as the movie, but still OK.
(I doesn’t have Gene Tierney…)
The end.
🥃👮🏼‍♂️

Great

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Would you listen to Laura again? Why?

Yes. The characters are all classic. This is what mystery drama shoud be.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

The performance was excellent. The range of characters portrayed make this reader an actors actor. Bravo!

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Don't reveal the ending

The Ultimate who-done-it

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Such an amazing book and experience. If you love the movie this is a must listen

Love it

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This story is long. As with most murder mysteries, it is a temptation to want to race through and get to the conclusion. Be patient and wallow in the character descriptions and insights that are outstanding.

Beautifully written

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Ok, he’d have to have been born around the year he died. And lived through the First World War and the collapse of Victorian/Edwardian assumptions. And the modernist experiments that sprang from that disaster. Nevertheless, imagine the man T. S. Eliot credited with inventing the modern English detective novel going one step further; imagine him applying his own literary trick to a hardboiled detective story, and telling it through the differing perspectives of its major protagonists.

The technique achieved for Vera Caspary much the same effects it did for Collins. We see characters in the round, as if they were statues in a gallery. And as each becomes more vividly three dimensional, the truth dawns on us as gradually as it does on the detective. If you can forget the movie—and your disappointment that Eileen Stevens doesn’t sound like Gene Tierney—you’ll enjoy this one immensely.

Imagine Wilkie Collins, Hardboiled

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