Finding Lost Voices: In a Lonely Place, A Crime Noir classic by Dorothy B. Hughes

A weekly email that brings back the voices of those who have been forgotten or misremembered.

I grew up in Sebastopol, CA, a small apple-farming town in Sonoma County where you wouldn’t think much crime happened. But two horrific crimes haunted my childhood. Ramon Salcido’s gruesome murder of his family (including his three daughters, one of whom survived having her throat slit and being left to die in a dump) and the 1993 kidnapping and murder of twelve-year-old Polly Klaas. How could these brutal murders have taken place? Who were the troubled men who committed these crimes? Perhaps these early encounters and the fear and fascination they left reverberating in me made me love True Crime (including podcasts like My Favorite Murder) and Crime Noir. But, whenever I read a book in the Crime Noir genre, the women seemed predictable and not like women I knew. That is until I discovered the work of the classic noir writer Dorthy B. Hughes (1904 - 1993). I first encountered Hughes in my biography writing workshop. One of our members, Rudy Castillo, was writing a biography about her and recommended I read her classic novel, In A Lonely Place. When I took her advice, I was amazed. I’d never read anything like it and couldn’t understand why I’d never heard of her work. Hughes was hugely popular during her lifetime. Several of her novels were adapted into Hollywood films. But, like many talented women writers of her era, her name has faded from the public eye.

Hughes (originally Dorthy Belle Flanagan) grew up in Missouri and knew she would be a writer from age six. She studied journalism at the University of Missouri, worked as a journalist, and took graduate courses at Columbia and the University of New Mexico. She began her publishing career as a poet. In fact, her poetry collection, Dark Certainty (1931), won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. The following year, Hughes married the wealthy businessman Levi Allen Hughes Jr.. They had three children before she published her first crime novel, So Blue Marble, in 1940, quickly followed by a sequel called The Bamboo Blonde in 1941. Over the next decade, Hughes would write eleven crime novels, many of which would be adapted into Hollywood films, including one starring Humphrey Bogart inspired by her 1947 hard-boiled Los Angeles novel, In a Lonely Place.

Set in post-WWII Los Angeles, In a Lonely Place is a dark, atmospheric novel written from the deeply troubled point of view of Dix Steele, a former airman. Dix, recently returned from the war, stays in his friend Mel Terriss’s apartment while he is away in Rio to find peace and to complete his crime novel. Or, this is what we are led to believe as we are experiencing the narrative as told through Dix’s perspective. However, within a few pages, we see Dix stalking young women at bus stops and fantasizing about the fear they feel, and we realize he isn’t just writing about crime; he is committing crimes.

When Dix reunites with his old Air Corps buddy, a police detective named Brub, who is on the hunt for a serial killer responsible for a series of stranglings that have been taking place across the city, Dix offers to help. Dix becomes enamored with Brub’s wife, Slyvia, but seeing her and Brub together only increases his loneliness and isolation. When he meets a young actress who lives in his apartment complex, Laurel Gray, he can end his loneliness, but Dix’s dark side will not allow him to.

What’s fascinating about this novel is how Hughes lets us as readers in on what is really happening while her unreliable narrator, Dix, doesn’t understand what motivates him to murder women. In essence, she was able to describe, as Sarah Weinman points out in her article about the author, “the psyche and actions of a serial killer years before the term existed.” In her book, I found a fascinating view into the mind of the type of person who committed the kind of horrific crimes that had haunted my youth. Even more significant than this is Hughes’s ability to write strong female characters. Ultimately, Slyvia and Laurel figure out what Dix is up to and save not only themselves but all of Dix’s future potential victims.

Like my current biography subject, Sanora Babb, and many women of her era, Hughes would not have called herself a feminist, but In a Lonely Place is a feminist book. It offers us an alternative Crime Noir setting where the women aren’t just victims. Instead, in Hughes’ novel, the women can see what the war-veteran turned-police detective cannot see.

For more information about Dorthy B. Hughes, check out the Lost Ladies of Lit episode about her late novel, The Expendable Man.

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Upcoming Events

I’m so pleased to be a part of two upcoming readings launching the amazing anthology Braving the Body (edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin and published by Small Harbor Publishing).

Thursday, April 25, 8-9:30 (ET), Virtual
Braving the Body VIRTUAL: LAUNCH
Harbor Editions via Facebook
Join Here

Wednesday, May 8, 7pm, In-Person
Braving the Body: Miami Launch w/ Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Jen Karetnick, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, & more
The Betsy Hotel
1449 Ocean Drive, Miami, FL