The Library of Congress Crime Classics is an ongoing series of reprints of critically hailed American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s. A true gem in this series is Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh. The tale concerns the disappearance of a college student who walks out of her dormitory unseen and unheard and the efforts of the local police department to find out what happened. Led by a sharp and energetic veteran chief, the local police take up the twisting case. The reader experiences a fast-paced police procedural (supposedly one of the first) loaded with gown vs town, character, and the local color of an early postwar America middle-class community, with its social concerns but no diversity.
– M.W.