Whitman Chambers. Once Too Often (1938) 265 pp.
On her wedding night, beautiful syndicated newspaper columnist Laura Lane confesses to press agent Les Burns that she is not in love with her husband, Harry Hanneman—she is in love with Les. A week later, on the night Laura arrives home from her honeymoon alone, she and Les discover her husband’s murdered body in the living room of their Oakland hills home. Even though he knows Laura is not telling him the whole truth, Les vows to protect her at all costs. Hanneman had recently inherited a fortune and was a leading congressional candidate; Laura was planning on using her new status as a Congressman’s wife as an entrée into Washington society and continuing her journalistic career there. Soon Laura is the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. As the police and the crime beat reporters close in, Les and Laura play a deadly game that could leave them either swinging at the end of a gallows noose or the victims of a killer.