Recommended reading - Detour: An Extraordinary Tale By Martin M. Goldsmith (1939):

Detour: An Extraordinary Tale

By Martin M. Goldsmith.

Filmed as Detour (1945), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer.

Published by Black Curtain Press.
First published 1939.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 1515426785
ISBN-13: 978-1515426783

Description:

Alex Roth is a musician who thumbs it out for L.A. and the woman of his dreams. Things hit a snag when a bookmaking driver Alex flags down suddenly ends up dead. With its tight, crisp writing comparable to James M. Cain and Chandler, the work translated perfectly on screen into the legendary noir "Detour," perhaps the greatest low-budget film ever made.

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED … 1938. Alexander Roth is hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles, where he hopes to reconnect with his self-absorbed, cutesy-poo girlfriend. A car stops to pick him up and he is soon plunged into a long nightmare from which there may be no escape. This fatalistic novel is a forgotten noir masterpiece that has languished for decades in the swamps of neglected crime fiction. In 1945, film director Edgar G. Ulmer cranked out the movie version in a couple of weeks on a microscopic budget, and it is now widely recognized as one of the greatest gems in film noir history. The novel is its equal in every way. Legendary crime fiction author Lawrence Block provides a foreword unique to this edition.