She’s a marvelous housekeeper, an accomplished cook, a gracious hostess to his friends, lovely to look at (and smells good, too, as Caspary points out more than a few times) and, to Charlie’s greatest delight, she’s hot stuff in bed.Ĭharlie is as smug and contented as a well-fed tomcat parked on a fireside hearthrug, until a few too many discrepancies in his wife’s accounts of her past history get him wondering about which version of her story is the real one. It felt very much like one of those melodramatic 1940s films where everything is so broadly telegraphed to the audience that we eventually become so hardened to subtle effects, which turns out to be an apt conclusion as I found out later that Vera Caspary was indeed a successful Hollywood screenplay writer from the 1930s to the early 1960s.īedelia is the tale of a besotted newly married man, Charlie Horst, and his adored bride, a beautiful and passionate young widow who gratefully clings to him and makes his life oh-so-sweet. Even the “tense psychological” bits are reported in a straight-faced, take-it-or-leave-it manner.īedelia and her new husband (and perhaps prospective victim?) Charlie posture and project all over the place, while I sat off in my spot as a not quite fully engaged spectator, figuratively yawning a bit and wishing they’d just get to the point, already. Caspary, if Bedelia is typical of her work, was a straightforward, “then she walked across the room” sort of writer. Right from the first page I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the writing no beautifully put-together passages here. Irresistable prospect for an evening’s light read, I thought.

How strange that a passion for percolators and copper pans should help solve the curious riddle of her past! She loved to cook, and she adored the gadgets of housekeeping. Her house, like her hair, was shining, her food delicious. Vera Caspary has written a study of a psychopath as fluffy as eiderdown, a kitten whose claws were steel.īedelia was everything to please a man – and she pleased many. One of the most intriguing mystery stories of recent years…Īlways up for a good mystery story, and since this vintage hardcover would only set me back a few dollars, I took the gamble and brought it home. I picked this book up “on spec” a few days ago my attention caught by the back cover quote by Lionel Barrymore, referring to Caspary’s previous book, Laura: This edition: Blakiston, 1st edition, 1945.

Vera caspary