Name: In a Lonely Place
ISBN: 9781681371474

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

She bridled. Retort was on her tongue but she withheld it, her eyes going over him again in that slow slant fashion.

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

Dorothy Belle Hughes

Postwar Los Angeles is a lonely place where the American Dream is showing its seamy underside—and a stranger is preying on young women. The suggestively named Dix Steele, a cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder about the opposite sex, is the LAPD's top suspect. Dix knows enough to watch his step, especially since his best friend is on the force, but when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray—a femme fatale with brains—something begins to crack. The basis for extraordinary performances by Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame in the 1950 film version of the book, In a Lonely Place tightens the suspense with taut, hard-boiled prose and stunningly undoes the conventional noir plot.

abi a

reading dorothy b. hughes always feels like writing and getting so far deep into the head of a fictional character that it’s disorienting to have to snap out of it. icky, too, this time, bc it’s not your work, and you don’t know where hughes is taking you but you’re game for wherever she wants to go bc no one wrote noir as crisply and as perfectly as she did. even if that means you’re trapped inside the mind of a man so delusional, so unhinged, so entitled yet so unaware, as he gradually loses it and falls neatly into the hands of the women he despised so much bc he claimed to want them and be wanted by them. 

the atmosphere & character work here was gorgeous 𐔌*ˊᵕˋ*𐦯 if 

 was a cake, it’d be something made both richer and more bitter by dark chocolate. it’s interesting to situate it within the context of the noir tropes that leave a terrible aftertaste in, say, chandler’s work. no one knows where to begin interrogating masculinity like a woman does, after all, and noir is all the worst of masculinity: the made-up rigidity, the delusions & posturing, the leaps of logic relied upon to upheld an ideal at the cost of incompetence, the loneliness of one’s own making—and the body count, in both definitions of the term, that these men glorify and leave in their wake. bleh. dix was one nasty main character.

reading dorothy b. hughes always feels like writing and getting so far deep into the head of a fictional character that it’s disorienting to have to snap out of it. icky, too, this time, bc it’s not your work, and you don’t know where hughes is taking you but you’re game for wherever she wants to go bc no one wrote noir as crisply and as perfectly as she did. even if that means you’re trapped inside the mind of a man so delusional, so unhinged, so entitled yet so unaware, as he gradually loses it and falls neatly into the hands of the women he despised so much bc he claimed to want them and be wanted by them. 

the atmosphere & character work here was gorgeous 𐔌*ˊᵕˋ*𐦯 if in a lonely place was a cake, it’d be something made both richer and more bitter by dark chocolate. it’s interesting to situate it within the context of the noir tropes that leave a terrible aftertaste in, say, chandler’s work. no one knows where to begin interrogating masculinity like a woman does, after all, and noir is all the worst of masculinity: the made-up rigidity, the delusions & posturing, the leaps of logic relied upon to upheld an ideal at the cost of incompetence, the loneliness of one’s own making—and the body count, in both definitions of the term, that these men glorify and leave in their wake. bleh. dix was one nasty main character.

Gracie Marsden

Dix Steele is back in town, and 'town' is post-war LA. His best friend Brub is on the force of the LAPD, and as the two meet in country clubs and beach bars, they discuss the latest case: a strangler is preying on young women in the dark. Dix listens with interest as Brub describes their top suspect, as yet unnamed. Dix loves the dark and women in equal measure, so he knows enough to watch his step, though when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. The American Dream is showing its seamy underside.