The Secret of Elizabeth

Vera Caspary is an expert at suspense and suspicion * NEW YORK TIMES *A sleek, saturnine thriller * INDEPENDENT *Noir in a nutshell * NEW YORKER *See just how slick Miss Caspary’s technique of soft-shoe terror can be - how frightening she can make the chatter at an innocent dinner party, the lure of a lady’s deshabille, the glimpse of a black pearl in a dresser drawer * NEW YORK TIMES *A superb mystery … a brilliant book * NEW STATESMAN *

Superior style … and an explicit knowledge of the world in which her characters move and breathe

Vera Caspary (1899-1987)

Vera Caspary, the acclaimed American writer of novels, plays, short stories and screenplays, was born in Chicago in 1899. Her writing talent shone from a young age and, following the death of her father, her work became the primary source of income for Caspary and her mother. A young woman when the Great Depression hit America, Caspary soon developed a keen interest in Socialist causes, and joined the Communist Party under a pseudonym. Although she soon left the party after becoming disillusioned, Caspary’s leftist leanings would later come back to haunt her when she was greylisted from Hollywood in the 1950s for Communist sympathies. Caspary spent this period of self-described ‘purgatory’ alternately in Europe and America with her husband, Igee Goldsmith, in order to find work. After Igee’s death in 1964, Caspary returned permanently to New York, where she wrote a further eight titles. Vera Caspary died in 1987 and is survived by a literary legacy of strong independent female characters.

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