Dorothy B. Hughes

"Los Angeles in the late 1940s is a city of promise and prosperity, but not for former fighter pilot Dix Steele. To his mind nothing has come close to matching 'that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky.' He prowls the foggy city night -- Ưbus stops and stretches of darkened beaches and movie houses just emptying out -- seeking solitary young women. His funds are running out and his frustrations are growing. Where is the good life he was promised? Why does he always get a raw deal? Then he hooks up with his old Air Corps buddy Brub, now working for the LAPD, who just happens to be on the trail of the strangler who's been terrorizing the women of the city for months ..."--

In a Lonely Place

Vera Caspary

Helen Eustis

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today's bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers is largely unknown. Their work, influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for rediscovery. This volume, the first of a two-volume collector's set, gathers four classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage that leads to today's leading crime writers. From the 1940s here are Vera Caspary, Helen Eustis and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.

Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s: Laura / the Horizontal Man / in a Lonely Place / the Blank Wall

Women Crime Writers

A classic California noir with a feminist twist, this prescient 1947 novel exposed misogyny in post-World War II American society, making it far ahead of its time. Los Angeles in the late 1940s is a city of promise and prosperity, but not for former fighter pilot Dix Steele. To his mind nothing has come close to matching “that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky.” He prowls the foggy city night—­bus stops and stretches of darkened beaches and movie houses just emptying out—seeking solitary young women. His funds are running out and his frustrations are growing. Where is the good life he was promised? Why does he always get a raw deal? Then he hooks up with his old Air Corps buddy Brub, now working for the LAPD, who just happens to be on the trail of the strangler who’s been terrorizing the women of the city for months... Written with controlled elegance, Dorothy B. Hughes’s tense novel is at once an early indictment of a truly toxic masculinity and a twisty page-turner with a surprisingly feminist resolution. A classic of golden age noir, In a Lonely Place also inspired Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart.

Dread Journey

“It was surprising what old experiences remembered could do to a presumably educated, civilized man.” And Hugh Denismore, a young doctor driving his mother’s Cadillac from Los Angeles to Phoenix, is eminently educated and civilized. He is privileged, would seem to have the world at his feet, even. Then why does the sight of a few redneck teenagers disconcert him? Why is he reluctant to pick up a disheveled girl hitchhiking along the desert highway? And why is he the first person the police suspect when she is found dead in Arizona a few days later? Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir. In books like In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse she exposed a seething discontent underneath the veneer of twentieth-century prosperity. With The Expendable Man, first published in 1963, Hughes upends the conventions of the wrong-man narrative to deliver a story that engages readers even as it implicates them in the greatest of all American crimes.

The Expendable Man

Superb Art Deco suspense set in the glamorous world of high society New York from 'An author with a flair for terror' The New Yorker 'If you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don't say we didn't warn you' New York Times Once the dashing, top-hatted twins, Danny and David, who share nice college boy laughs, have the marble, they will do to Griselda what they have done to the others. Her estranged husband, Con, is a thousand miles away, and can't save her. A bloody trail has wound around the so blue marble: years of theft, torture, violence; whispers of secret riches, gold, diamonds, rubies as big as the moon. Soon it would be Griselda's turn. But Griselda believes that nothing ever happens to nice people, and that there is no reason to feel nervous at night, not even in the heart of New York, and knowing what she does about the marble . . .

The So Blue Marble

Espionage, adventure and a hard-boiled heroine not to be trifled with -- this classic noir will have you gripped from start to finish. Julie Guilles is in trouble. She's fled her home in Occupied France for a seedy neighbourhood in New York and has been laying low -- but not low enough. Because now she has the Gestapo, the FBI and her shady Uncle, the Duc de Guille, all on her tail, and her options are running out. Whispers of the Blackbirder reach her -- a sinister figure who, for the right price, can promise safe passage across the border to New Mexico. Finding the Blackbirder is her only chance of escape -- but what if the Blackbirder doesn't want to be found?

The Blackbirder

Trouble from out of town explodes in a small desert village in New Mexico when three strangers arrive for the fiesta, each bearing a grudge and an interest in hunting down the others. Reprint.

Ride the Pink Horse

It's carnival time in Santa Fe, and three out-of-town visitors are drawn together in the heat, the smells and the colour of the festival . . Sailor, a hood from Chicago, is there to confront his boss, Sen, a crooked politician, to try to get money for what he knows about the murder of Sen's wife, killed supposedly during a robbery gone wrong. Following them both is Mac, a man from the same side of the tracks as Sailor, but who has made very different choices. He's a cop now, and wants Sailor to testify against Sen and put him away. The three strangers collide, retreat and advance through the streets of New Mexico, moving ever closer to a charged and unexpected outcome . . .

Hugh Densmore, a young intern, becomes obsessed with solving the murder of Iris, a young hitchhiker whom he turned away when she asked him for help

Sara Paretsky

Who killed Louie Lepetino? Was it Barby, with her silvery sheen of hair, looking like a top model and acting like a woman madly in love? Or the beautiful Toni, who is hiding some strange secrets? Could it be Otto, a handsome refugee, nicknamed Blue Eyes and an object of attraction for Barby? Kit, a cop's son, has come back to New York to track down his best buddy's killer. It had to be murder: Louie wasn't the suicidal type. One person stands in the way of his revenge - The Wobblefoot, his unseen nemesis from two terrible years spent in captivity during the Spanish Civil War. He is watching. One false step will mean curtains for Kit. But Kit is willing to take any risk for a friend - even murder in cold blood.

The Fallen Sparrow

A starlet on a transcontinental train fears her director may be trying to kill her in this novel by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Dorothy B. Hughes. Four years after she arrived in Los Angeles, Kitten Agnew has become a star. Though beautiful and talented, she’d be nowhere without Vivien Spender: Hollywood’s most acclaimed director—and its most dangerous. But Kitten knew what she was getting into when she got involved with him; she had heard the stories of Viv’s past discoveries: Once he discarded them, they ended up in a chorus line, a sanatorium, or worse. She knows enough of his secrets that he wouldn’t dare destroy her career. But he may be willing to kill her. On a train from Los Angeles to Chicago, Kitten learns that Viv is planning to offer her roommate a part that was meant for her. If she lets him betray her, her career will be over. But fight for the part, and she will be fighting for her life as well.

During the annual Fiesta, three desperate men converge in a perilous New Mexico town in this “extraordinary” crime novel (The New Yorker). It takes four days for Sailor to travel to New Mexico by bus. He arrives broke, sweaty, and ready to get what’s his. It’s the annual Fiesta, and the locals burn an effigy of Zozobra so that their troubles follow the mythical character into the fire. But for former senator Willis Douglass, trouble is just beginning. Sailor was Willis’s personal secretary when his wife died in an apparent robbery-gone-wrong. Only Sailor knows it was Willis who ordered her murder, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut in exchange for a little bit of cash. On Sailor’s tail is a cop who wants the senator for more than a payoff. As Fiesta rages on, these three men will circle one another in a dance of death, as they chase truth, money, and revenge.

An escapee from a Spanish prison hunts for his best friend’s killer in New York For more than a year, Kit McKittrick languishes in a Fascist prison, his days spent in darkness and his nights tortured by fear of his limping jailer, whose name he never learns. He escapes Spain with the help of Louie Lepetino, a childhood friend who came with him to fight on behalf of the Republican cause. Back in the United States, Kit heads out West to recover from his ordeal, while Louie returns to a life of cafés and cocktail parties in New York. But Kit’s convalescence is cut short when he learns Louie has taken a fatal tumble out of a window, and he journeys to New York to discover who gave his savior the final push. Only a woman could have led Louie to his death, Kit thinks, and New York is full of femmes fatales. But man or woman, Louie’s murderer should watch out for Kit: He wants vengeance, and he’s willing to kill for it.

Los Ángeles de finales de los años cuarenta es una ciudad de promesas y prosperidad, excepto para el expiloto de aviones de combate Dix Steele, que vive su vida como un oasis de tedio en comparación con «la sensación de poder, euforia y libertad que le producía surcar los cielos en solitario». Steele pasa las noches merodeando entre paradas de autobús vacías, playas en penumbra y cines cerrados, en busca de mujeres jóvenes y solitarias. Apenas tiene dinero y no ve ningu- na salida a sus frustraciones. ¿Dónde está el sueño americano? Su vida da un giro inesperado cuando se reencuentra con su viejo compañero del ejército, Brub, que trabaja para la policía de Los Ángeles y que va tras la pista de un estrangula- dor de mujeres que lleva meses sembrando el terror en la ciudad...

En un lugar solitario

Three well-heeled villains terrorize New York's high society in pursuit of a rare and powerful gem

One of them is the link to Davidian. One of them is holding out . . . Steve Wintress's flight to Los Angeles is forced down in bad weather, and he shares a car into town with three fellow travellers: a shy young soldier, a cool Hollywood actress and a Justice Department official. But all four passengers have something in common - something any one of them might kill to get their hands on. Every secret agency in the world wants to possess the Davidian Report, smuggled out of East Berlin by a Communist defector, and it's lying somewhere in LA. Steve wants that Report, but he'll have to fight with the big guns, like the CIA and the FBI, if he's going to get there first . . .

The Davidian Report

One-way ticket to death . . .? 'Hughes is the master we keep turning to' Sara Paretsky 'The tension and terror of Dread Journey are such that few will be able to lay the book down unfinished' New York Times 'Cornell Woolrich meets Agatha Christie' Publishers Weekly 'Superbly done' Washington Post In the four years since she arrived in Los Angeles, Kitten Agnew has become a star. Not all by herself, of course; though beautiful and talented, Kitten would be lost without her director, the acclaimed and powerful Vivien Spender. But Spender is a dangerous man. Kit knows that, and has heard all the stories - of discarded stars that have ended up in a chorus line, or a sanatorium, or worse. Spender knows that Kit knows, and wouldn't dare destroy her glittering career. But he may be willing to kill her . . . On a train from LA to Chicago, Kit makes a discovery that could have her fighting not just for her career, but for her life.

Alone in New York City, Lizanne Steffasson comes face to face with reality when her dream of acting on Broadway collapses. Now she just needs to pay her rent. So she answers an unusual ad in the paper, for 'a beautiful girl. One not afraid to look on danger's bright face'. Lizanne is neither beautiful nor fearless, yet she is certainly about to look danger in the face. A New York estate lawyer wants her help to track down a young man who has vanished into the wilds of the city on the eve of inheriting a vast sum of money from his billionaire late father, a Swedish man known as the Cross-Eyed Bear. It turns out that Lizanne is the perfect person for the job, as she knows more about the story than her employer has bargained for . . .

Dorothy B. Hughes

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