Recommended reading - The So Blue Marble, by Dorothy B. Hughes (1940):

The So Blue Marble

By Dorothy B. Hughes.

Introduction by Otto Penzler.

Published by American Mystery Classics.

First published 1940.

ISBN-10: 1613161050

ISBN-13: 9781613161050

Description:

The debut by one of the great American suspense writers will suck you in even as it makes you keep asking, "Did I just read that?" – Kirkus.

Nonstop action, with menace and daring exploits bursting through the smooth veneer of upper-class life.. Readers new to this forgotten classic are in for a treat. – Publishers Weekly.

You will have to read [The So Blue Marble] for yourself, and if you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don’t say we didn’t warn you. – The New York Times Book Review.

Extraordinary . . . [Hughes’s] brilliant descriptive powers make and unmake reality. – The New Yorker.

The society pages announce it before she even arrives: Griselda Satterlee, daughter of the princess of Rome, has left her career as an actress behind and is traveling to Manhattan to reinvent herself as a fashion designer. They also announce the return of the dashing Montefierrow twins to New York after a twelve-year sojourn in Europe. But there is more to this story than what’s reported, which becomes clear when the three meet one evening during a walk, and their polite conversation quickly takes a menacing turn. The twins are seeking a rare and powerful gem and they believe it’s stashed in the unused apartment where Griselda is staying. Baffled by the request, she pushes them away, but they won’t take no for an answer. When they return, accompanied by Griselda’s long-estranged younger sister, the murders begin...

Drenched in the glamour and luxury of the New York elite, The So Blue Marble is a perfectly Art Deco suspense novel in which nothing is quite as it seems. While different in style from her later books, Dorothy B. Hughes’s debut highlights her greatest strengths as an author, rendered with both the poetic language and the psychology of fear for which she is known today.