My True Love Lies

The War is over, but only just, and San Francisco is still crammed with military uniforms. Of course, being San Francisco, it's also crammed with Bohemians (in a few years, they'll be known as Beatniks). Noel Bruce straddles both camps: By day she's a straight-laced driver for the Navy, but at night she lets her hair down and parties with her flamboyant art-school chums.

The party comes to a screeching halt, however, when a dead body turns up in a sculptor's studio, and the artists discover that pretentious mannerisms and amusing facial hair provide little defense against the chill of fear. As in "Skeleton Key," the heroine is a working woman, and, like all of Offord's novels, "My True Love Lies" provides an intriguing bridge between old-fashioned, 1930s-style plotting and a kind of feminism that feels startlingly up-to-date.