In a Lonely Place

Dorothy B. Hughes 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, several of which were made into successful films, including In a Lonely Place (1950). She was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

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.