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  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241639184
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

In a Lonely Place





A chilling, stylish piece of LA noir

After the war, cynical veteran Dix Steele has moved to L.A., a city terrified by a strangler preying on young women. Bumping into an old friend, now a detective working on the case, Dix is thrilled by closely following the progress of the police. And meeting his new neighbour, sultry and beautiful actress Laurel Gray, brings even more excitement into his life. But the strangler is still prowling the streets - and Laurel may be in more danger than she realises...

  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241639184
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Dorothy B. Hughes

Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-93) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and lived most of her life in New Mexico. A journalist and a poet, she began publishing hard-boiled crime novels in 1940, three of which were made into successful films: The Fallen Sparrow (1943), Ride the Pink Horse (1947) and In a Lonely Place (1950). In her later years, Hughes reviewed crime novels for the LA Times, the New York Herald Tribune and other papers. She was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

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Praise for In a Lonely Place

My favourite crime writer. Full stop

Sara Weinman, Los Angeles Review of Books

Dorothy B. Hughes is the unsung godmother of every feisty female investigator who has hit the streets in the last twenty-five years

Val McDermind

Dorothy B. Hughes was in a class of her own. To be a female author of hard-boiled fiction back in the 1940s was unusual enough, but to write a first-person narrative from the viewpoint of a male serial killer was breaking new ground by anybody's standards. She marked out this territory years before most other writers even knew it existed.

Max Decharne, author of Hardboiled Hollywood: The Origins of Great Crime Films
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