In a Lonely Place

by Dorothy B. Hughes

Dix had it all: women, expensive clothes, Mel's swanky apartment, his car, even his gold-tipped cigarette lighter. But the easy life left Dix cold. Then a series of sex murders flared across the headlines and lit his curiosity. It thrilled Dix to risk everything by joining the hunt. Tracking a killer was the most amusing game he'd ever played.

A beauty with red-gold hair and a sultry copper mouth, and an old friend turned hard-nosed L.A. cop are leading characters in this dazzling mystery. The New Yorker has called Dorothy B. Hughes "an author with a flair for terror." In a Lonely Place has shattering suspense and a swift, arresting climax.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Noir, Crime, Classics, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Dorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) was a mystery author and literary critic. Born in Kansas City, she studied at Columbia University, and won an award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets for her first book, the poetry collection Dark Certainty (1931). After writing several unsuccessful manuscripts, she published The So Blue Marble in 1940. A New York–based mystery, it won praise for its hardboiled prose, which was due, in part, to Hughes’s editor, who demanded she cut 25,000 words from the book.

Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946). Both were made into successful films. In the early fifties, Hughes largely stopped writing fiction, preferring to focus on criticism, for which she would go on to win an Edgar Award. In 1978, the Mystery Writers of America presented Hughes with the Grand Master Award for literary achievement.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”


Dorothy B. Hughes

I’d known Dix Steele since the war, well since London anyway. He was hung up on this dame named Brucie then. A woman we all wished would look at us the way she looked at Dix, but there were plenty of dames for everyone. The British Roses were enamored with American pilots and believe you me we cut quite a swath through the lavender scented air.

I lost track of Dix and then ran into him again in New York. He was with another dame, a long legged bit of sparkle that laughed when she was supposed to and knew how to touch a man just right to let him know she was interested. I was with some gal I’d met at the dry cleaners. She wasn’t pretty, but she was alright. Next to Dix’s bit of sparkle her clothes looked a little drab and her face, well she might have been prettier if she’d smiled once in a while.

Dorothy, as it turned out, was fascinated with Dix. When the girls left for the bathroom which left me wondering if Dorothy’s dourness would rub off on the Sparkle or if the Sparkle would manage to loosen Dorothy up, Dix leaned in and said “whadya think”?

“She’s gorgeous Dix.”

“Not my dame. I was talking about your dame.”

“Well she’s not my dame. We just met.”

Dix had a terrible temper. I could see his face tighten and realized I wasn’t getting what was bothering him.

“She keeps staring at me.”

I leaned back and lit another cigarette. “Jesus, Dix, girls always do like you. I’m already jealous you’ve got the prettiest girl in here.”


Dix had strong hands.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me in closer. “It ain’t like that.” His fingers were like steel rods pressing my skin tightly against the bone. I shook him off feeling a momentary flare of my own anger. I drained the last of the Rye in my glass.

“I’ll tell you what Dix we will shove off as soon as the girls get back.”

I was expecting him to say something along the lines of that wouldn’t be necessary, but he just nodded to me and said: “That dame with the probing eyes would be a pleasure to throttle.”

I pulled Dorothy aside before she could sit down. I could tell she was not happy to be leaving, but after another long look at Dix and then a look back at me she nodded her agreement. Dix was right about something. She did have eyes that looked deep inside a guy. As we were waiting for the coat check girl to bring our things she said to me: “Dix has issues with women.”

I laughed. “Yeah, too many of them chasing him.”

I had thought about taking her to another club. Maybe after a few more drinks she’d get a little more friendlier, but all she was interested in was Dix. She shotgunned questioned at me like she was going to write a book or something. I answered a few, but there was no end to her curiosity. I finally pulled over near her apartment and said: “You’re going to have to kiss me if I’m going to answer any more questions.”

She pulled a face that put a damper on any pleasure I would have had from what I could only assume were cold, cold lips anyway. “It’s alright girly I don’t want a kiss you don’t want to give.”

She scooted over closer to me. I put my arm around her and I could feel the wired energy running through her. She gave me a peck on the cheek that was more chaste than what a nun would have offered up to Jesus. I opened my door and stepped out. I reached in and helped her out. I thanked her for a lovely evening. She gave me one more probe of those dark eyes and then she walked away without acknowledging anything I’d said.

That evening was the last time I saw Dix or Dorothy, but not the last time I heard of them. I was killing time in a bookstore, not because I read, but because I was dating a book seller with pale gold hair that shimmered sending shivers down to my toes. In a pyramid of books on the table at the front was a book by Dorothy B. Hughes, a name which sounded really familiar. I opened up the back and saw her picture. It was...the obsessed about Dix...Dorothy. I looked at the cover. IN A LONELY PLACE

“Well I’ll be damned.” I heard a gasp from a blue haired battle ax with her hands over the ears of a young girl.

I laughed and told them I was sorry.

There was Dix’s name larger than life in the text.

I bought my first book.

It seems Dix was right about Dorothy being obsessed with him. She even followed him to Santa Monica, California. She published IN A LONELY PLACE as a novel, but from what I gathered from newspapers there was more truth than fiction in the book. I guess I always knew something was a little off about Dix, but I had no idea of what he was capable of.


Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in the movie In a Lonely Place. (A really great movie that is under appreciated. )

I went to see the movie too. I was a big fan of Humphrey Bogart. Gloria Grahame looked exactly like the kind of dame that always liked Dix. I had to admit I liked the movie better. They changed the plot, but that anger in Bogart’s face was the same cold fury I’d seen transform the pleasing features of Dix Steele into a mask of hate. It makes me feel a little queasy when I remember the glittering madness he showed me that night I was out with Dorothy and he said: “That dame with the probing eyes would be a pleasure to throttle.”

I’m a novel reader now because of Dorothy B. Hughes. Who would think so much real life could be wrapped up in fiction? I married the bookseller not for the shimmering hair, but for the 40% discount on books.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lo descubrí en una crítica de Juan Carlos Galindo para El País en la que lo calificaba de clásico mayúsculo. No se equivocaba.

Hay película homónima, dirigida por Nicholas Ray e interpretada por Humphrey Bogart en su papel principal. Tras terminar la lectura, e intrigado por saber cómo el actor había abordado un personaje tan alejado de los papeles a los que nos tiene acostumbrados, no paré hasta encontrar y ver la película. La decepción fue total, no porque fuera una mala película, posiblemente sea hasta buena, pero la historia está tan alejada de la contada por Hughes —además del título, únicamente coinciden los nombres de los personajes, siendo la trama infinitamente menos interesante que la que se narra en la novela— que me pareció una película fracasada.

Mientras el personaje interpretado por Humphrey es simplemente un hombre incapaz de manejar sus explosiones de furia, el retratado por Hughes es un ser atormentado desde la niñez por un intenso complejo de inferioridad que le había abocado a una soledad insoportable y a un intenso estado de ira permanente.

“Nadie volvería a relegarlo jamás a la segunda posición”

Una ira que se despertaba con mucha facilidad y por muchos motivos, los ruidos le eran especialmente molestos, pero era la felicidad de los otros la principal causa de su sufrimiento. Una ira que solo podía atenuar (no es destripe, esto se sabe desde las primeras páginas) forzando, violando y, finalmente, estrangulando mujeres, acciones en las que sentía una irresistible sensación de “poder, euforia y libertad”.

“Él disfrutó de esa felicidad una vez, pero fue muy breve; la felicidad estaba hecha de mercurio y se te escurría de las manos como ese metal…Al infierno con la felicidad. Eran más importantes la emoción y el poder y el cálido azote de la lujuria. Esas cosas te hacían olvidar. Convertían la felicidad en una nube de azúcar rosa.”

Mediante una falsa tercera persona, Hughes nos introduce espléndidamente en la cabeza de este perturbado criminal, en sus miedos, en sus deseos, en su frágil e inestable seguridad, en su misoginia ante unos seres que odia tanto como necesita y con los que ejercita con gran maestría su indudable atractivo. Enfrente tendrá a dos mujeres fuertes, seguras de sí mismas, con un peso en la historia que la película les roba muy equivocadamente.

Un auténtico cinco estrellas del género, de una calidad literaria indudable y con aromas a la mejor Patricia Highsmith o a la Rebeca de Daphne du Maurier.


P.S. En el mal rollo que me provocó la película tuvo mucho que ver el desaire que me pareció que se hacía a la autora en la propia película: el personaje que encarna Bogart es un célebre escritor de Hollywood al que le encargan un guion basado en una novela de éxito que él descarta por bazofia reescribiendo completamente la historia.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

American Noir, In a Lonely Place was written in 1947. It is one of the first, if not the first, in the type of book that delves into the mind of a serial killer. This was even before they were called serial killers.

Dorothy B. Hughes, the writer, was way ahead of her time. She wrote dark novels, diving deep into the seedy side of the American experience. Toxic masculinity was not a term either, although the protagonist, Dixon Steele, personifies it. A recently decommissioned pilot, Dix was used to being adored and pampered as the elite of the military. In civilian life, he is a nobody with no job, no money and no prospects. He doesn't want a job. He wants money without having to work for it. Lazy, violent and entitled is not a great recipe.

We are in his head. It is a void. When he wants something, he takes it. People are not real to him; they are pawns to be used or fooled, because he is smarter than everyone else. He "falls in love" easily and demands that the woman live for him. When his unrealistic expectations don't pan out, there's hell to pay. His only true emotion is glee when he has gotten over on someone. He gets high, not from booze, although he drinks a lot, but from the exhilaration of the hunter and the hunted. He is both. He hunts the women and the police hunt him.

I can't say that being inside his mind is pleasant, it's not, talk about an unlikable character, but it is interesting. I don't know if the author succeeds at knowing what killers think about, but this is probably pretty close.

[Francesc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinaria novela.
Te mantiene en vilo todo el tiempo. La autora genera una atmósfera de duda que te hace mantener la tensión durante la lectura. Y lo hace con muy poca cosa. Te muestra una parte y deja que el lector se monte su propia película. Muchos deberían aprender de ella.
Al principio, cuesta engancharte a la trama, pero, una vez que te ha atrapado, ya no puedes dejar de leer. Es lo que me ha decidido sobre las 5 estrellas: las ganas que tenía de conocer el final. Pocos libros lo consiguen (en mi caso).
Desarrolla a la perfección las diferentes personalidades de los personajes y, aunque Dix Steele es quién dirige, diría que las mujeres son las auténticas protagonistas de la historia. Cada una aporta su parte y añade su propio diálogo a la novela.
No es que la autora le haya dado un giro a la historia, no se trata de eso. Más bien, ha conseguido que el lector dude de todo y, cuando consigues eso, sea cual sea el final, te sorprende. Tal vez no es novedoso o original en el siglo XXI, pero da igual. No es lo importante. Lo importante es que, con muy poco, sin necesidad de constantes giros forzados hasta el hastío, la autora consigue atraparte y eso, en el siglo XXI, sí tiene mucho mérito.

Extraordinary novel.
It keeps you on edge all the time. The author creates an atmosphere of doubt that makes you maintain tension during reading. And it does it with very little. She shows you a part and lets the reader make his own movie. Many should learn from it.
At first, it's hard to get hooked on the plot, but once it's got you, you can't stop reading anymore. It is what has decided me about the 5 stars: the desire I had to know the end. Few books succeed (in my case).
She perfectly develops the different personalities of the characters and, although Dix Steele is the one who directs, I would say that women are the true protagonists of the story. Each contributes her part and adds her own dialogue to the novel.
It is not that the author has flipped the story over, it is not about that. Rather, she has made the reader doubt everything and when you get that, whatever the end, it surprises you. Perhaps it is not novel or original in the XXI century, but it does not matter. It is not important. The important thing is that, with very little, without the need for constant forced turns to exhaustion, the author manages to catch you and that, in the XXI century, does have much merit.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were a single gal living in post-war Los Angeles you’d probably find Dix Steele absolutely dreamy. After all, he’s a big handsome fella who dresses well and likes to dine out in swell places. He was a fighter pilot in the war, and now he’s working on writing a mystery novel so he’s certainly leading a colorful and interesting life. Just one problem. About once a month he feels a compulsion to strangle a strange woman to death.

Oh, well. Nobody’s perfect, right?

We spend the entire book in Dix’s head starting with him on the prowl for his next victim on a foggy night in the hills, and then he visits his old war buddy Brub. Dix is such a cool customer that he doesn’t flinch when he learns that Brub is one of the police detectives working on the strangler murders, but Brub’s wife Sylvia seems a bit cool to him. As we follow Dix through this daily life we learn that he’s a man filled with anger and resentments as well as wild mood swings that intensify when he starts dating a beautiful neighbor lady.

I was only dimly aware of Dorothy B. Hughes until the recent re-release of this novel made a bunch of the crime writers I follow on social media start gushing about the book and film loosely based on it. That caught my attention, and I can see why they were excited about it. The main thing about it is that it seems way ahead of it’s a time in its depiction of the mindset of a serial killer.

Coincidentally, it also made a good companion piece to be reading while in the middle of watching Netflix’s new series Mindhunter, and Dix seems to exactly fit the pattern of a certain type of woman hating killer. And Dorothy Hughes was creating this character long before the psychology and terminology referring to them would become mainstream thanks to serial killers becoming a profitable true crime industry as well as a staple of thrillers in print and on screen.

Overall, it was a solid piece of work that I would have rated as a strong 3 stars, but then I read the afterword by Megan Abbott which made me think even more highly of it. Mighty Megan makes a lot of great points about how Hughes had tapped in a strain of misogyny that the genre often used, and that she then cleverly subverts it in places in ways that crime fiction hadn’t seen. That hadn’t occurred to me while reading, and it made me realize that there was another layer to the book that I hadn’t quite wrapped my arms around so I bumped it up to 4 stars.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on the way to LA recently, because that's where the book is set. This is first-class noir. What truly sets it apart is the prose style: so elegant and sculpted. The author's first book was a book of poetry in the Yale Young Poets series, and I can say I wasn't surprised at all. I delighted in these sentences. Hughes really ought to be better known, as she more than holds her own against Chandler and Hammett.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

My introduction to Dorothy B. Hughes is In a Lonely Place, her 1947 crime novel that upon its reissue in 2017 by New York Review Books Classics with an afterword by Megan Abbott, launched magnificent reappraisals by NPR, the Paris Review, Vice and others as groundbreaking noir with a feminist twist. While I believe that this novel has been picked as clean by sixty years of film and television as The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, there is fruit to pluck from this tree, with Hughes taking the reader on a stark, unapologetic ride with a man and his dark passenger.

Set in Los Angeles in the months following World War II, the novel documents the existential crisis of Dix Steele, an Air Corps veteran who with a crucial but despised allowance from his Uncle Fergus has rambled out to the West Coast. Unable to sleep, Dix boards a bus to the beach, where he watches the surf before an attractive woman climbing off the Brentwood bus attracts his attention. Tailing her home long enough to make her nervous, Dix ends up at a bar, where he find himself in no mood to drink. A chance remark by a bar patron reminds him of a war buddy named Brub Nicolai who he's been meaning to look up.

Invited to drop by his house in Santa Monica Canyon, Dix reunites with Brub and is introduced to his wife Sylvia. Dix remains cool when he learns that Brub is an LAPD detective and rather than be intimidated, accepts the news as a challenge. Dix maintains that he's working on a novel. Struck by Sylvia's beauty as a lady, Dix draws the impression that she's simply accommodating him for her husband's sake and lopes off with promises to visit again soon. Restless, Dix boards a Wilshire-L.A. bus. He spots a girl waiting alone at a bus stop in Westwood and knowing that night buses don't run often, gets off two blocks away.

Subletting an apartment in Beverly Hills from a college pal named Mel Terriss who's in Rio for the year, Dix is interrupted the next morning by a phone call from Sylvia, inviting Dix to meet her and her husband at a nightclub for dinner. Dix is both attracted to and repulsed by the idea of intruding on the couple's newlywed bliss, preferring his status as a lone wolf. At dinner, Brub shares his frustration with Dix over the LAPD's inability to apprehend a serial strangler who struck again last night. Dix becomes obsessed with a redheaded neighbor who he successfully picks up, an actress named Laurel Gray who though also lonely, begins to distance herself from what she detects in Dix.

The morning paper had columns on the case. Having been scooped by the afternoon papers on the original story, this sheet at least was making up its loss by intensive research. It had pictures of the girl, Mildred, of her family, of the apartment house where she'd played bridge, of the lonely spot in Beverly Glen Canyon where her body was found.

Her name was Mildred Atkinson and she had led a very stupid life. Grade school, high school--Hollywood High but she was no beauty queen--business college and a job in an insurance office. She was twenty-six years old and she was a good girl, her parents sobbed. She played bridge with girl friends and she once taught a Sunday-school class. She didn't have any particular gentleman friend, she went out with several. Not often, you could bet. The only exiting thing that had ever happened to her was to be raped and murdered. Even then she'd only been subbing for someone else.

The sleuths had found that she and the man had a cup of coffee about midnight in a near drive-in. The couple had been served inside, not in a car. She'd been standing there, waiting for a bus. Her girl friends had waved goodbye to her. The man had seen her standing there alone, a little nervous. He'd said, "Busses don't run often at night," as if he too were waiting. She hadn't wanted to talk; she'd been brought up not to talk to strange men. "Mildred was a good girl," the parents sobbed. She'd never let a man pick her up, her girl friends chorused, but they wondered how much they hadn't known about Mildred. "Not unless she knew him." The cops were scouring the town now, talking to every man Mildred had known. They'd be thorough; they'd check every man who'd passed through that insurance office. Believing they had a lead at last on a man apparently as normal as you or I, who tracked women at night. The lead editorial called him Jack the Ripper and demanded more and better police protection. The editorial--it was a non-administration paper--sneered politics and got in some snide cracks about the mayor.

At first blush, I didn't care much for In a Lonely Place. I enjoyed reading it, was frequently thrilled by it, but the terrific afterword by Megan Abbot (in the NYRB Classics edition) detailed the attributes of a literary masterpiece that I didn't quite find. The novel is a stark one, with very few characters, fleeting glimpses of Los Angeles in the late 1940s and sex and graphic violence that's implied but not described. It becomes repetitive, with Dix Steele's dwelling on the same two women and his angst getting long in the tooth. With a week between finishing the book and writing this review, though, Hughes' economic venom grew on me.

She grimaced. "I told you I'd learned my lesson. Don't marry money." No one was paying her rent. She was on her own; the ex, the rich one, must have settled up. She'd see to that; she and a battery of expensive lawyers. He said lightly, "It's the man who pays and pays. It couldn't have been too bad. You can sleep mornings and not have to worry about the roof over your head."

She said, "Yes," and the hardness came about her mouth. "As long as I don't marry again."

He understood her bitterness, but, understanding, he was disturbed. There could be someone she wanted, the way he was going to want her. She wouldn't have the hatred of the ex if there weren't a reason; she had his money to live on and free of him. Dix couldn't go on asking questions; he'd asked too many now. He was prying and she'd known it when the anger went out of her. He smiled at her again. "I'm glad that's the way it is," he said.

To take a page from Abbott, there are shades of several of my favorite 1970s movies throughout In a Lonely Place and it is possible to draw a line from Travis Bickle, Bree Daniels, even Ellen Ripley (what place is lonelier than deep space?), alienated from purpose, love, corporate success or all of the above and pulled down by a sinister undercurrent as a result. While many of the films and television that have followed from Hughes' premise in the last thirty years have greater finesse and are easier for me to relate to, in terms of fiction, it's difficult to imagine another author topping this novel as efficiently.

Length: 74,000 words

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

There wasn't any girl worth getting upset over. They were all alike, cheats, liars, whores. There'd only been one decent one among them and she was dead.

His name is Dix Steele. He's young and handsome, a real lady-killer, possibly in every sense of the word. He has very structured ideas about how women should behave. He's fond of women who wait alone in dark, lonely places. There's this one woman in particular who reminds him of a girl he used to know back in England...he'd definitely like to get to know her better.

This is an unusual story in that the killer has gone out of his way to rekindle an old friendship with a war buddy who is now a cop. Flirting with possible discovery quickly becomes a thrill for Steele, and he insinuates himself more and more into his friend's life. I was surprised how intriqued I became with the lives of these characters, since I'm not usually too wild about people who have dinner at "the club." Unlike many books I've been reading lately, this one held my interest the whole way through to the end.

Originally published in 1947, the killings depicted in this book seem tame by today's standards. It's probably the least violent book about a serial killer that I've ever read.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel from Dorothy Hughes, a portrait of a sociopath in post-WWII Los Angeles, was very loosely adapted in to the under-appreciated noir classic movie directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.



Notice my use of the word loosely. If you've only ever seen the movie then you only have a vague idea of what this novel is about and probably even less idea of what happens.

This is the story of Dickson Steele, heir to a fortune who was forced to work his way through Princeton in the manner of his rich uncle, former Air Force pilot who found himself rootless and aimless in the aftermath of war, new in LA and in a very lonely place. It's also the story of a serial killer, a strangler and rapist who once a month seemingly finds themselves unable to resist the lure of leaving another dead body in their wake. Told from the perspective of Dix as he interacts with a bevy of beauties and his fly buddy Brub, now a detective in Beverly Hills, and slowly falls apart as more bodies are found. General suspicion of Dix Steele aside this novel couldn't really get much further from the movie, something I was expecting but preparedness doesn't always temper disappointment.

A note on the movie first: It's a unique piece of noir cinema in my opinion, not least because of the fascinating and complex performance from Humphrey Bogart as a possibly innocent man suspected of murder by all those people closest to him (a theme that was revisited to brilliant effect by the Danish film maker Thomas Vinterberg in the new film The Hunt,) but largely thanks to the direction of Nicholas Ray as he changes the perspective from that of Dix to that of his accusers part way through. Very suddenly you realise you no longer have any sympathy for the man, you fear him and fear for his friends and family and the way Ray achieves this is remarkable. It was this point that got me really interested in how Dorothy Hughes had originally written it, I expected dark, I expected a different ending (although the Hollywood ending is pretty dark, right up there with The Killing as far as noir slaps in the face go) but I didn't expect something that clearly influenced Patricia Highsmith and in particular her famous Tom Ripley.



There really is a strong touch of the Ripley about Dix Steele too. He's a good looking charmer from the wrong side of the tracks; a guy who doesn't think he should have to work, someone who wants more than they can legally get their hands on and who seems like they'd be willing to go beyond what is socially acceptable to obtain it. His life is one big facade and it takes its toll on his clearly already fragile state of mind. Hughes doesn't fill her narrative with gory details or violence or omnipotent narration, by utilising the first person voice of Dix as her narrator she leaves plenty of room for doubt in the reader. Even having finished the book I still cannot tell you if the murders are solved by the novels conclusion. It's all very impressive but a trick that may lead to boredom in some readers.

Personally I can fully appreciate the quality of this work but at the same time I failed to engage with the text; I would have liked more exploration of Steele's psyche perhaps, maybe a little less ambivalence, I might even suggest that it's all a bit too cold and clinical. Last year I read The Blackbirder from the same author which I thoroughly enjoyed but looking back I think I might have made the same complaint of that one if it hadn't been for the strong sense of place and paranoia that was evoked.

All that aside Dorothy Hughes is certainly a noir writer worth investigating.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Once he’d had happiness, but for so brief a time. Happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of it again. It was long ago, and an ancient past.”

“To hell with happiness. More important with excitement and power in the hot start of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”

“He had to get out, to be alone in his lonely place. To remember and to forget.”

Reading this hard boiled mystery of haunting terror and loneliness is a spellbinding novel of power that I will never forget. I learned about this novel after having watched the great film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame as Steele and Laurel, respectively. However, the film completely jettisons the plot of Hughes’ novel, which is ten times more disturbing in its psychological study of a man filled with rage and toxic masculinity. Like other great noirs, this is a terrifying gem of a novel that examines Postwar trauma, anxiety, and toxic masculinity in a meticulous and slow burning way.

Dixon Steele is a drifter, a war veteran whose unpredictable mood swings out of PTSD and the power of being a dominant POW during World War 2, is more Tom Ripley than the lazy and world weary screenwriter interpretation that Mr Bogart gives in the film.

After the war, Dixon mooches off his Uncle Fergus in Princeton, NJ, then later in Los Angeles through his well to do friend Mel Terris, allegedly in Rio. Dixon reunited with his war buddy Brub and his suspicious wife Sylvia, only to find out that Brub has been investigating a series of murders by a serial killer targeting young women.

To complicate matters, Dix falls for his neighbor, the alluring Laurel Gray who becomes terrified of his mood swings and suspects something is off. In the novel, it is Laurel and Sylvia who help tie the loose ends, and its chilling end is just as effective as how the movie ends.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

First the bottom line: I loved this novel. It reads like something from Patricia Highsmith, with its focus on exploring the mind of a sociopath, but actually predates Highsmith's first novel by three years or so.

Second, re the film: book and movie are really two very different entities, so I can understand how, if someone sees the film first and then reads the book, disappointment might set in. The same is true vice versa -- I read the novel first and expected something much different than I got from the movie. I ended being crazy about both of them, but for me it's definitely the book that has the edge. Bottom line: you won't be sorry either way -- both book and movie are excellent; both worth the time you put into them.

Third: I've posted about this book at my reading journal so feel free to take a look there.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this with the #NYRBWomen23 group, another book I likely wouldn’t have read otherwise.

The third-person narration of the main character, Dix, is claustrophobic, and there was a brief time when I felt it was too much; but the story is brilliantly written and un-put-down-ably plotted. Being inside Dix’s head is a horrible experience in so many ways — his misogyny and his self-justification for his horrific actions — but Hughes is also brilliant in gradually letting the reader know, or suspect, what Dix, doesn’t.

This genre, whatever one might call it, is not my usual and I wonder if I can say Hughes surpasses genre, especially one I’m not conversant with beyond an author or two, like Chandler and Hammett, both of whom I've only read once. Throughout the 1940s and into the early 50s, Hughes published several “mysteries” that could also be classified as crime fiction or even noir today. For ten years she stopped writing novels due to family responsibilities, and in 1963 published one more. I started reading it last night. Hughes was popular in her day and, once again, I am amazed (though I shouldn’t be) at how such a great female writer is now lesser known than her male counterparts.

There’s a loosely adapted movie version of this book starring Humphrey Bogart, but I’m not inclined to watch it. One angry Dix is enough, at least for now.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is absolutely criminal that this amazing book has ever gone out of print.

National treasure Hughes's The Expendable Man might have maintained its social relevance better, but this is the finer book. Fans of Chandler and other vintage crime will slurp this down, and it's worth reading for its description of forties Los Angeles alone, even without all the rest.

But the rest...! Dix Steele makes all other characters from that era's so-called hardboiled fiction look like pantywaist pussies. This book is disturbing, and still has the power to chill and shock even this jaded reader almost seventy years down the line.

I've always been repulsed by our culture's popular fascination with serial killers. The main thing that bothers me about it is a widespread lack of recognition that serial killers are nearly always committing what are essentially hate crimes against women, and that both the murders and our obsession with their lurid details reflect and amplify our society's wider and arguably more subtle misogyny. This is a point Dorothy Hughes must have been acutely aware of, and her interest in the dynamics of gender and class seems ahead of its time and is sure to delight today's students of Women and Gender Studies, which is no doubt why CUNY's Feminist Press did the good work of reprinting it.

Undergraduate English class essay fodder aside, this book was a blast! While Dix is never exactly a sympathetic character, he is certainly an empathetic one, and this novel from the perspective of an evil villain totally works. The end portion I thought was a bit less tight than the rest and felt somehow both bloated and rushed, like maybe Hughes was on a deadline and in a hurry to get done; it wasn't bad, just slightly less awesome than what I'd expected... Aw, but it was still plenty awesome, though.

If you like this sort of thing -- postwar urban anomie, claustrophobic narration that makes you wake up in the middle of the night with a sour sense of dread that the world is a horrid fucked up scary place -- you had really better check this one out.

[Kansas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorothy B. Hughes es otra de esas autoras invisibles largamente escondidas y leyendo "En Un Lugar Solitario" te das cuenta de hasta qué punto fue una desconocida en una época en la que la mayoría de los autores de novela negra que copaban el mercado eran hombres. Pero no era la única, también estaban Margaret Millar, Vera Caspary. Celia Fremlin, Charlotte Amstrong, Dolores Hitchens... en fin, algunas de ellas nadie las ha rescatado por aquí, pero gracias a Gatopardo Ediciones por lo menos tenemos esta inmensa novela de una de las grandes.

Tengo una cierta debilidad por todas estas autoras americanas de los 30, 40, 50 que se dedicaban a escribir novela negra, pulp, escondidas, ninguneadas, en la sombra, pero quizás de todas, esta novela que me ocupa es de las que más me ha impresionado. Los temas que aquí toca Dorothy Hughes siguen siendo muy actuales: el trauma que una guerra ha dejado en una persona descolocándola completamente (quizas lo que llamamos hoy Trastorno de estrés postraumático), o la mente de un asesino en serie en plena pulsión.

"El disfrutó de esa felicidad una vez, pero fue muy breve; la felicidad estaba hecha de mercurio y se te escurría de las manos como ese metal (...) Al infierno con la felicidad. Eran más importantes la emoción y el poder y el cálido azote de la lujuria. Esas cosas te hacían olvidar. Convertían la felicidad en una nube de azúcar rosa.".

Esta novela fue publicada en 1947 por lo que a mi me parece todo un hito que una autora como Dolores B. Hughes se atreviera con una historia sobre un asesino en serie y no es spoiler porque toda ella es desde el punto de vista del asesino. A través de sus páginas asistimos en primera persona a su mente, su pulsión obsesiva, su autojustificación, su complejo de inferioridad..., toda la novela es justo eso, el retrato psicológico de Dixton Steele y el bucear en su mente, mientras por otro lado y paralelamente se lleva a cabo la investigación de los asesinatos.

"Ignoraba que sus nudillos eran bultos blancos que presionaban la mesa, con el pitillo machacado entre los dedos. Ese momento pasó y pudo recuperar el control. Dejó que la ceniza del cigarrillo cayese al suelo. Un segundo más y podría hablar.".

Y de la misma forma que Ida Lupino, fue la primera directora de cine que realmente se atrevió a tocar temas tabú como por ejemplo el de la violación sin focalizarlo en la culpa que tenían ellas (ya que hasta ahora en cine se las trataba como femmes fatale solo por ser violadas), sino realmente como victimas, aquí en "Un Lugar Solitario", Dorothy B. Hughes nos muestra la mente misógina de un hombre responsabilizándolo completamente de sus actos, cuando realmente en novela negra y en cine negro hasta ahora, ellas siempre habían sido cuestionadas: si eras victima de una violación algo mal debías haber hecho o por lo menos se sugería. Me ha recordado mucho esta novela a Outrage de Ida Lupino por cómo aborda el tema de la violencia sobre la mujer.

"Un Lugar Solitario" es una novela brillante, y me ha impresionado muchísimo el retrato que hace esta autora de Dixton Steele y todo lo que la guerra ha despertado en él, todo un viaje por la mente de un hombre atrapado en una cierta locura y que realmente siente un gran desprecio no sólo por la sociedad que le rodea, sino por sí mismo.

"La habitación ya estaba en penumbra; se quedó sentado ahí, envuelto en una densa oscuridad. Le dolían los dedos, clavados en las manos. Una banda de hierro le apretaba la cabeza. Un destino estúpido lo había acosado durante toda su vida. Había tenido que machacarlo para conseguir alguna vez algo que estuviera bien. No estaba acabado (...)Iba a conseguir lo que deseaba. Iba a tener dinero y sabía dónde conseguirlo. Una vez que le hubiese echado el guante al dinero, dejaría de ser un segundón. Sería un lider a donde quiera que fuese. Nadie volvería a relegarlo jamás a la segunda posición.".

Esta novela fue adaptada al cine por Nicholas Ray, una pelicula también soberbia de 1950 y protagonizada por Humphrey Bogart y Gloria Grahame pero después de leer la novela, la veo más bien como que está "libremente" inspirada en el sentido de que se centra en otras cuestiones, aunque la base esencial de la novela que es el tema de la violencia sí la comparte. De los pocos ejemplos en que la adaptación al cine es tan buena como el texto original.

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2019...

[Ace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a refreshing change to read a crime novel without all of the gory blood and violent details. The portrait of a serial killer is expertly crafted here and not only could you feel the tension building up, the you could almost reach out and touch the dark, foggy atmosphere. Loved it.
#indiebuddyreads rock

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fascinating!, both for the plot & for a glimpse of a long vanished Los Angeles. This book makes the 1940s sound awesome!

I was envious of Dix's LA lifestyle at the start - borrowing a friend's apartment, a leisurely read of the daily newspaper, exploring LA.

Right from the beginning it is clear that Dix is a murderous stalker but it becomes apparent he is a sociopath that will eliminate anything that gets in his way. He is a risk taker too. He allows war buddy Brub into his life, even though Brub is now with the police.

I'm forgiving some slightly weird phrasings & maybe towards the end the writing could have been tighter, because I found the climax so satisfying.

Hughes didn't write many books before turning to literary criticism. Some of her books are still very reasonable in price & I still have an Amazon gift card burning a hole in my monitor! 😅 But I read this book as part of Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s: Laura / The Horizontal Man / In a Lonely Place / The Blank Wall which I picked up cheaply on Amazon a couple of years ago. It is now an eyepopping price, but may still be worth it, based on the quality of this book & Laura.

I will be getting to the other two novels very soon.

https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...

[Eliasdgian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Για όποιον θέλει να διαβάσει ένα ακόμη whodunit κλασικό αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα, με φρικιαστικές περιγραφές φόνων και φρενήρεις αστυνομικές καταδιώξεις, το «Σ’ έναν έρημο τόπο» (In a lonely place, 1947) μάλλον δεν πρόκειται να είναι το πιο αγαπημένο βιβλίο του. Η ταυτότητα του κατά συρροή δολοφόνου του μυθιστορήματος αποκαλύπτεται στον αναγνώστη από τις πρώτες κιόλας σελίδες του και οι πολυάριθμοι στραγγαλισμοί γυναικών στους οποίους αυτός επιδίδεται αναφέρονται διηγηματικά χωρίς να περιγράφονται οι σχετικές ανατριχιαστικές λεπτομέρειες. Παρ’ όλα αυτά (χωρίς τις συνήθεις ευκολίες, δηλαδή), η Ντόροθι Χιουζ δημιουργεί ένα εξαιρετικό hard-boiled μυθιστόρημα μ’ έναν τραγικό κεντρικό ήρωα (που θυμίζει τον Τομ Ρίπλει – πριν ασφαλώς επινοηθεί αυτός από την Πατρίσια Χάισμιθ) ο οποίος, όπως νιώθει αδήριτη την ανάγκη να σκοτώσει, άλλο τόσο πασχίζει ν’ αγαπηθεί.

Εξαιρετική η ψυχολογική προσέγγιση ενός δολοφόνου που εγκληματεί χωρίς σαφές κίνητρο ή μοτίβο και αριστοτεχνική η αφήγηση μιας σκοτεινής αστυνομικής ιστορίας πέρα από τα φώτα και το γκλάμουρ του μεταπολεμικού Λος Άντζελες.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

02/2021

I read this again, a mere six years after the first time, because I saw the 1950 Nicholas Ray movie starring Humphrey Bogart. And they totally changed the end of the story into a blatant production code studio happy ending. And I remembered the book, but I wanted to confirm that I was right. I was. Well, 1950 Hollywood.

04/2015

This should have been a story or a novella. The plot isn't built on suspense, and it becomes tiresome being long. It's spectacularly cool that a woman was writing books in the "noir vein" in the 1940s. How did I not know about her until this year? From a killer's perspective, this seems to be looking toward the future...it precedes Ripley by several years, preceding American Psycho by some 40 years. There's maybe a murderous main character I don't know about or am forgetting? The best thing is, she wrote a lot of books!

[Kushagri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was wild! It has got that gritty, noir vibe that makes you feel like you've stepped into a black-and-white movie from the 1950s. It kinda reminded me of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" because it takes a walk through a dark psyche. It's not a mystery in the traditional sense, but it keeps you hooked and on edge. Definitely gave me those Patricia Highsmith vibes.

The writing style is classic noir, with snappy dialogue and a moody, atmospheric setting. Hughes paints a vivid picture of post-World War II Los Angeles, and you can almost feel the tension in the air.

If you're into suspenseful mysteries with a touch of psychological depth and a vintage vibe, this book is definitely worth a read. It's a gripping thriller and I found it intense and engaging. This one was a bit heavy and somewhat traumatising. I might go for a lighter read next!

[Tony]

This is not a whodunit. We know rather quickly who is strangling women in Post-WWII Los Angeles. And we get the why of it soon, too. What intrigues, instead, is how the crimes will be solved, and who will do the solving.

The events are revealed through the third-person eyes of the killer. But I didn't find him very interesting, his psychopathology too obvious. Instead, I liked the subtle ways four other characters are defined, and how little bits of dialogue may or may not indicate that they are on to him. We know, but do they?

[Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: Bumping this up a star, as I always end up doing.

Three stars is probably way too harsh, but I read this book in small chunks during a week of particularly bad insomnia, which didn’t help. It was very interesting to read a woman’s take on male psychopathy, although I didn’t really find Dix Steele (heh) a believable serial killer (he’s a rapist and strangler of women, but the violence is kept “off-page”). I feel like the inside of a serial killer’s head would be less… ordinary. But maybe that’s the point? The book is written in the third person, so Dix can’t be considered an unreliable narrator, but Hughes uses so much free indirect speech that the book might as well be first-person. We see all the other characters through Dix’s warped misogynistic lens. The book maintains his point of view throughout, which can’t have been easy to pull off, given the logistics of mystery writing—although Hughes cheats a bit by having a friend from Dix’s war days be a cop on his case.

I found the ending a bit half-hearted. Laurel disappears from the story, and it’s unbelievable that the LA police would use an officer’s wife for the job as bait.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about Humphrey Bogart as an actor. Of course, I’d seen Casablanca. I watched Sabrina, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (which inspired PT Anderson’s There Will Be Blood), and the adaptation of this book with the same title. Maybe I’m revealing my ignorance, but I think he’s overrated… The film takes a massive dump on the book—although it definitely couldn’t have been made into a Hays Code film.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an introduction to a collection of his mystery stories,Isaac Asimov dismisses the sort of mystery novel in which we know who the killer is all along as a sort of wallowing in pathological psychology. He himself wrote mysteries in what he, somewhat self-servingly, called the traditional mode - puzzle stories that were far removed from the actual scene of any crime and had various conundrums presented and solved during the course of polite dinner-table chat.

The implication was that a novel like this holds only a morbid interest, a kind of voyeuristic thrill. While I enjoy Asimov's brand of mysteries for what they are, I disagree with his literary opinions. We get an inkling of the killer's identity early on in this novel; it soon becomes a certainty, and as the killer goes about his madness, we wait to see when the police will find him out.

But it isn't just a case of sadistic wallowing; in fact, all the killings are off-stage and the focus is less on the killing as on an overall portrait of a psyche bent just that little bit more out of shape than anyone else's. Contrary to the popular image of serial killers as Hannibalesque geniuses, I've always noticed that most serial killers tend to be people with limited minds but powerful impulses, and Hughes offers a chilling portrait of just such a man in this novel. I won't suggest that this novel redeems itself by being a psychological case study; but it does delve into the nature of an evil man in ways that provoke as much serious thought about morality and ethics a they do the shudders and gasps that a good suspense novel deals in.

Hughes was a brilliant writer, able to fully inhabit her characters' mental world and to tell a taut, engaging story with a great balance of interior and exterior detail. Her characters make sense and her plot is gripping. An yes, a mystery is solved along the way. This isn't just an excursion into a deranged mind - it's literature wrapped up in genre and equally good in both roles. I'd easily rank this novel along with The Killer Inside Me, The Big Sleep and Red Harvest as one of the finest noir novels I've read yet. There's a time and a place for tidy little puzzles, but that doesn't mean that a crime novel that hinges more on characterisation is just an excuse for visceral hi-jinks. Writers like Hughes do us a great service by stripping away the veneer and bringing us face to face with familiar monsters, monsters who are familiar because looking at them is like gazing into a warped mirror.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisiting In A Lonely Place

The New York Review of Books has recently reissued Dorothy Hughes' novel "In a Lonely Place". The novel is also included in a Library of America two-volume set of "Women Crime Writers" of the 1940s and 1950s. I had read and reviewed the novel in the 1940s volume of that set and in an earlier paperback edition of the book. In 1950, the novel was made into a celebrated film directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. I had the good fortune to see the film last year as part of a noir film festival. The movie differs substantially from the book. Those familiar with both the book and the film frequently disagree on which they prefer. I prefer the book.

Hughes' book is one of the first novelistic explorations of a serial killer. The primary character, Dix Steele, had been a fighter pilot stationed in England during WW II. Hughes introduces the reader to Dix as he wanders the streets on the outskirts of Los Angeles on a rainy foggy September evening looking for a young woman to rape and murder. The first potential victim evades him, but he soon finds another. The plot is complicated when Dix reconnects with his former Air Force buddy Brub Nicholai, and his lovely and perceptive wife Sylvia. Brub has become a detective who is investigating the murders of young women which, unknown to him, his old friend Dix has committed. A loner who suppresses his feelings of violent rage, Dix has become involved with a young divorced redhead, Laura, with a flair for high living. Dix's passion for Laura leads to his downfall.

Although narrated in the third person, Hughes' novel manages to get inside the mind and heart of Dix Steele. Hughes' taut, hardboiled writing makes the reader understand her chilling character and almost feel sympathy for him. Even with his old friendship with Brub and his attempted love affair with Laura, Dix is an essential loner and a killer, wandering the streets and isolated beaches at night, driving his car through the rain, and plotting his murders. Here is one of many passages in which the author gets inside her character as Dix remembers a woman he had loved while stationed in England.

"He drove away not knowing where he was going or why. Only to get away. He did not know how far he drove or how long. There was no thinking in his mind; there was only sound, the swish of the dark wet water over the cold sand, colder than Brucie; the water was the voice of a girl, a voice hushed by fear, repeating over and over , no ... no .. no. Fear wasn't a jagged split of light cleaving you; fear wasn't a cold fist in your entrails; fear wasn't something you could face and demolish with your arrogance. Fear was the fog, creeping about you, winding its tendrils about you, seeping into your pores and flesh and bone. Fear was a girl whispering a word over and again, a small word you refused to hear although the whisper was a scream in your ears, a dreadful scream you could never forget. You heard it over and again and the fog was a ripe red veil you could not tear away from your eyes. Buucie was dead. Brucie whom he had loved, who was his only love."

The novel gives a portrayal of the anomie that affected many young men after they returned from the war, including those who undertook to live productive lives. The book also portrays Los Angeles in the late 1940s. However this is primarily a work of noir as it portrays the mind of a serial murderer.

The Library of America compilation of women crime writers includes a biographical sketch of Dorothy Hughes (1904 1993) Hughes began her writing career as a journalist and a poet: a 1931 volume "Dark Certainty" won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Beginning in 1940, Hughes wrote a long series of suspense novels. She was named a "Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America" in 1978. In her later years, she wrote a biography of Eric Stanley Gardner. Although many readers find feminist themes in "In a Lonely Place", Hughes was skeptical about feminism.

I found "In a Lonely Place" an outstanding book which creates suspense and probes the soul. Both the Library of America and the New York Review of Books deserve credit for making this novel available and accessible to readers.

Robin Friedman

[Trudie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little surprised by how much I enjoyed this claustrophobic masterpiece of LA noir.

Sometimes I find these 40s era style of mysteries overly melodramatic and well, hammy ? Certainly, there are moments in The Lonely Place where I was mentally writing a score consisting of gradually building violin music while scenes like this played out :

“Laurel” he said, and she came to him the way he had known from the beginning it must be.
“Laurel” he cried, as if the word were the act. And there became a silence around them, a silence more vast than the thunderous ecstasy of the hungry sea"

Lest you tire of my orchestral soundtrack I will break it up with the forlorn blaring of fog horns, believe me, you will need them, I could hardly read the text for all the fog ;)

He could hear the boom of the breakers far below, he could smell the sea smell in the fog. There was no visibility, save for the yellow pools of fog light on the road below, and the suggested skyline of the beach houses. There was a soft fog-hung silence, broken only by the thump of the water and the far-off cry of the fog horn

Despite all the mist, highballs and erotically surging waves, this is, on balance a pretty exceptional bit of writing. That opening chapter is a little masterpiece of tension and there are several set pieces in this that make me think you should forget Chandler, Hammett, Cain or even Highsmith, if you want classic noir then Dorothy B. Hughes is where it's at.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

Since half a dozen of my GR friends have all read this recently and most have ALSO given it 5 stars, I had to see what all the fuss was about - never having seen the more famous 1950 film 'based' on it. And it IS a terrifically exciting, unusual and evocative read, but there were a few instances in which the hard-boiled prose gets a bit over-the-top, and one has to chuckle. Apparently Hughes' editor made her delete 25,000 words and it is STILL a mite overwritten, and could have used some tightening up - often, salient points are reiterated over and over, and weren't really necessary. But these are very minor quibbles, and I'd like to read more of her back catalog - perhaps her other two novels which were made into films.

After finishing the book, I did watch the film, and it bears almost no resemblance to the book - they took the character names and jettisoned virtually everything else; there is not a single scene that correlates to any in the book. The movie is very fine in its own right (especially Gloria Grahame's performance), but it would be interesting for some savvy director to make a film from the book's plot, especially if they filmed it in B & W, using noir techniques.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deliciously dark prose, taut dialogue, sex, murder; this female-authored noir has it all in spades, set in post-WWII Los Angeles, awash in emasculated paranoia of the returned soldier. Aftershocks of this book can be felt in the writings of Jim Thompson and the serial killer novels of Thomas Harris. Don't miss the brilliantly insightful Afterword by Megan Abbott in the NYRB edition.

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

[7/10]
For a change, instead of following a hard boiled private eye along the mean streets of the big city, we get inside the head of the criminal and follow his twisted rationale , his torturous train of thought that leads to a series of murders of innocent women in Los Angeles, close after the end of WW II.

With the identity of the culprit more or less revealed in the opening chapter, there was a certain lack of tension and a predictability that limited my involvement in what is definitely a well written and well researched story. While I read better thrillers told from the perspective of a serial killer ( The Third Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders comes to mind) , this book has the merit of being one of the first to explore the self deception, the compulsive behaviour, the paranoid anger at the world and most of all the basic loneliness that characterizes the deranged mind of these killers. Still, I was bothered by the claimed cleverness of the main actor and the obvious mistakes he makes - primary of these for me being the assumed identity, with the car, the apartment and the clothes of one of his victims. . The author gets some credit for spotting this potential weakness and making Dix an adrenaline junkie, pushing the limits and taking chances, probably missing the danger and the rush of his flying career in the war.

The prose and the dialogue may lack the colourful similes, the snappy dialogue or the fisticuffs of other noir novels from the period, but it has instead a powerful atmospheric mix of night lights, mist, empty beaches, plus a few well turned riffs on the theme of loneliness and the inevitability of the path taken:

“The criminal doesn’t escape.” Dix smiled wryly.
Brub said, “I won’t say that. Although I honestly don’t think he ever does escape. He has to live with himself. He’s caught there in that lonely place. And when he sees he can’t get away — ” Brub shrugged. “Maybe suicide, or the nut house — I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s any escape.”

As I said, I found the ending predictable, but there is a certain poetic justice in having Dix brought down by two of his intended victims.

I have seen the movie version with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame years ago and I loved it, but the book I finished just now seems to have little in common with it. I guess I must check it out again and refresh my memory.

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

He fled from the goodness of that home, and his hatred for Laurel throttled his brain. If she had come back to him, he would not be shut out, an outcast in a strange, cold world. He would have been safe in the bright warmth of her.

Dix Steele would cast himself in the starring role. It is a movie, a tale of heroes. It is a world gone wrong and on his masculine shoulders to right everything in place. Chalk outline of an angry little boy throwing a tantrum on the ground. Real blood and smoke dreams. Dorothy B. Hughes was kinda brilliant in her use of the third person narrative. It was as if every cruel wish, every self conscious thought, oozed out of the air around him into unconscious clues. He lives hatred and breathes violence. He gives himself away. He could have been watching his reflection in the windows, thinking "What are people thinking about this handsome man?" He feels good looking, though not worth a special glance, when he wants to hide among other men. He's a man like any other. He's a prize to women. He suits himself in what people aren't saying. The in spite of him, the real world, is the mystery.

I can see a little bit of Dix in men I have encountered in my life. The filthy homeless man in the public library who ogled a teenage girl in short shorts earlier this year. When I replaced her he gave me the "You don't have a right to exist" look. These are the kinds of men who must believe that women owe it to them to be hot and what the hell is going on when the same women don't fall at the feet of them, fat slobs and all. They would insist that no women is good enough for them if someone inquired about their current love lives. Dix is a hero and his new lady neighbor belongs to him. His army buddy's wife could belong to him, if he wanted her. Hughes is too good at this. Dix notes that a woman's hips are too wide for her slacks. Hughes almost doesn't need to write it. I would know he was thinking it, know he would kill her and believe he was doing humanity a favor. He reads about one of his own crimes and it is both natural to him and putting himself up to imagine that being raped and murdered was the most "exciting thing to happen to her". The attention is on himself, what he believes he deserves, more than on his poor victims. I had the feeling that even before he ever murdered anyone he didn't have a lot of brain power left over once projecting his self image of an attractive alpha male. It was his uncle's fault that he didn't pay the way for a life in style. It was the fault of the wealthier men he knew from his Princeton days. Dix doesn't want to work for the lush life he could grow accustomed to. I admired the way that Hughes did this. Dix takes it for granted that the world also saw him as the rightful heir to the money and the cars. He has to think about it to believe it and think about it constantly. There is nothing left inside of him for anyone or anything else.

Dix murdered his one time parasitic host, Mel, and takes his apartment, charge accounts and car for himself. Hughes made the bed that Dix lies in. He looks up his army buddy Brub. He looks for a woman to nest with in his stolen apartment. Laurel belongs to him. Outside of his nursed world order I see Laurel relate to Dix. Both are angry at a world not at their feet. Both feel small in front of the cool and collected Sylvia, wife to the detective. In the peripheral vision there is a real Laurel, scared of what he looks like to others. In the real world Dix is a real man to the real detective. Dix doesn't want to live in the lonely place of protecting his clues. In the movie in his mind he's a soldier cutting through fog and cold nights. He wouldn't have been caught had he not wanted the other life too, the normal life. He was hungry for blood and he wanted to sleep like an innocent baby when he was done.

It is telling when Dix pines for the good old days of war. Brub calls them the worst days of his life and to Dix they were the best. He used his army position of authority to get women. He had position over men who he saw as above him in the other world he never wanted to return to. I don't believe that he would have stayed satisfied for long if he had what he wanted. There's something too he's reassuring himself about a prize collected in him. He compares himself too often to what others have. Others will always have more.

I admired the balance of conscious and unconscious thought of her killer. I didn't love the book, though. A little bit went too long a way. Too long I had to stay in his apartment and think mine, mine, mine thoughts. He only exists hell bent on his desires.

My town's police department put out something last year advising citizens not to make themselves victims. Don't go out at night and what were you wearing?! (I wish that for once someone would point out that most women are raped jogging in broad daylight, and wearing sweat pants, no less. Oh, and men were drunk as an excuse but why was that woman drinking?!) The people in the story see it that way. One of the victims is said to be a nice girl for a body discovered on skid row. When it is found out that he murdered the girl who didn't want him back in London circa army days? Brub says "I didn't know she was like that". Dix replies that she wasn't. It is when he again wants the prize, believes it was his after all, that he misses the loss of Brucie. Not the real woman, the Dix prize. They don't exist to him as anything other than a prize. It is all on him. The other people in his movie are not real people. The female friends of the girl in the paper wonder if they knew another victim after all. I wonder how real they were to everyone else if they thought how she put herself in the position to be murdered. It didn't seem as if she was the sort to pick up men. It is all about the killer in Hughes' book. When women are murdered it is about the killer, nothing they did. I think that's what I liked about this book the most. It is his world, to him, but he doesn't own it, doesn't own anyone else.

[Ana Cristina Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si te gusta la novela negra clásica, esta es una autora que merece la pena conocer. Algunos de sus títulos fueron adaptados al cine, en concreto esta novela tuvo como protagonista a Humphrey Bogart, en una película del mismo título.

Es una intriga tipo 'en la mente del asesino', que me ha recordado a la Highsmith, ya que analiza muy detalladamente todos los aspectos de la psicología del criminal y nos hace vivir cómo se va sintiendo cada vez más acorralado. El protagonista es Dix Steele, un expiloto de aviones de combate que tiene dificultades para adaptarse a la vida civil en el floreciente Los Angeles de los años 40. Cuando se reencuentra con su ex-compañero del ejército, Brub, que ahora está casado y trabaja en la policía, la relación entre ellos se va complicando cada vez más, al tiempo que diferentes mujeres aparecen estranguladas.

El ritmo de la narración y la descripción de los personajes es estupenda, te mete de lleno en la trama y es una lectura muy ágil. La ambientación también ayuda, con mucha niebla y oscuridad que contrasta con el típico clima soleado californiano:

Vio cómo la niebla empezaba a caer sobre la luz azul del patio. Caía y se quedaba allí suspendida, de manera lánguida y silenciosa. Se mantenía a la espera en su cuarto oscuro, tras la oscura ventana. Esperaba y observaba.

4,5*

[F.E. Beyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narrated by a murderous psychopath. The genius is that he is quite normal. He gets his laundry done, falls in love and enjoys time with friends. But he is vain, insecure and lacking in empathy. He eternally feels sorry for himself

“Once he’d had happiness but for so brief a time; happiness was made of quicksilver, it ran out of your hand like quicksilver. There was the heat of tears suddenly in his eyes and he shook his head angrily. He would not think about it, he would never think of that again. It was long ago in an ancient past. To hell with happiness. More important was excitement and power and the hot stir of lust. Those made you forget. They made happiness a pink marshmallow.”

When he is triggered he has trouble controlling his anger. Killing is stress relief, an addiction he'll never kick. He also loves the thrill of taking calculated risks and outsmarting the police. The violence is kept in the background, the murders are described after the act. We can predict the ending but the story is still compelling. The film changes things up a lot and is a top-notch noir starring Humphry Boggart. You can see Eddie Muller's great intro to the movie on TCM Noir Alley on YouTube.

Dorothy B. Hughes captures the atmosphere of Hollywood at the time. I'd have no problem putting this in front of "The Postman Always Calls Twice" as the best noir novel I've read.