In a Lonely Place
By Dorothy B. Hughes.
Filmed as In a Lonely
Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray.
Published by NYRB Classics.
First published 1947.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 1681371472
ISBN-13: 978-1681371474
Description:
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.
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