In a Lonely Place: Dorothy B. Hughes

I enjoy reading post-war mystery novels, especially those written during those years. This novel by Dorothy B. Hughes was published in 1947 but has a very different style and atmosphere than other novels that I have read from that time. In a Lonely Place is a noir classic, a portrait of a serial killer, written before this type of novel was so prevalent as it is now. The story is told from Dix Steele's point of view, but the killings are not described in the book except by the police after examining the scene of the crime. 

As the book opens, the reader gets a picture of Dix Steele. He was a pilot in World War II, and he misses flying, although he is very cynical about the war. He is standing on a piece of land overlooking the beach and enjoying the feeling it gives him.

It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air. Something too of being closed within an unknown and strange world of mist and cloud and wind. He'd liked flying at night; he'd missed it after the war had crashed to a finish and dribbled to an end. It wasn't the same flying a little private crate. He'd tried it; it was like returning to the stone ax after precision tools. He had found nothing yet to take the place of flying wild.

While he is out, he looks up an old pilot friend from the war, Brub Nicolai, who lives nearby. Dix has been in Los Angeles for seven months but only now calls to let him know he is in town. On the spur of the moment, he decides to visit Brub and the wife he married when he got back from the war. He discovers that Brub is a police detective and seems to be displeased with that information, although he keeps this from Brub. Only later do we learn that Dix is the serial killer attacking the young women in the area... and Brub is on the case.

The book was adapted to film by Nicholas Ray; the stars are Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham. The film is quite a bit different from the novel but is still very good viewing. 

I admire and enjoy Hughes' writing. She is very good with both characters and setting. I have read two other books by this author. The Davidian Report, also published as The Body on the Bench, is a Cold War spy novel, although it doesn't fit that mold perfectly. The descriptions in that book of Hollywood Boulevard are fantastic.  Ride the Pink Horse is set in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the week-long Fiesta celebration and again, the descriptions of the setting and the people are great. All of these books are on the darker side.

This novel was published in the Library of America volume titled Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s. I read this book a year ago, in January 2021. 

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Publisher:  Library of America, 2015 (Orig. pub. 1947)

Length:  184 pages

Format:  Hardcover Collection

Setting:  Los Angeles, California 

Genre:   Mystery / Noir

Source:  I purchased my copy