Лучшие книги Дороти Б. Хьюз

A classic California noir with a feminist twist, this prescient 1947 novel exposed misogyny in post-World War II American society, making it far ahead of its time.

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.

Afterword by Megan Abbott.

Espionage, adventure and a hard-boiled heroine not to be trifled with - this classic noir will have you gripped from start to finish
Julie Guilles is in trouble. She's fled her home in Occupied France for a seedy neighbourhood in New York and has been laying low - but not low enough. Because now she has the Gestapo, the FBI and her shady Uncle, the Duc de Guille, all on her tail, and her options are running out. Whispers of the Blackbirder reach her - a sinister figure who, for the right price, can promise safe passage across the border to New Mexico.
Finding the Blackbirder is her only chance of escape - but what if the Blackbirder doesn't want to be found?

The critic HRF Keating chose The Expendable Man as one of his Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books. ‘A late addition to the thirteen crime stories Dorothy B Hughes wrote with great success in one prolific spell between 1940 and 1952,’ it was, in his view, her best book. But it is far more than a crime novel. Just as her earlier books had engaged with the political issues of the 1940s – the legacy of the Depression, and the struggles against fascism and rascism – so The Expendable Man, published in 1963 during Kennedy’s presidency and set in Arizona, evokes the emerging social, racial and moral tensions of the time.

Book Description A 1947 classic that takes us inside the mind of a male serial killer. Author Dorothy B. Hughes explores the ana-tomy of American -misogyny and -accomplishes a mystery writing tour de force by depicting his eventual -capture-by two

An actress finds herself caught between her ex-husband and a pair of murderous twins

At the age of twenty-four, Griselda Satterlee has already lived two lifetimes. A star of the silver screen, she gives up Hollywood after a year and moves to New York to become a designer. While her ex-husband, Con, is out of town, she is staying in his apartment. Walking back one night, she meets two cheerful young men who want to go home with her - and won't take no for an answer.

David and Danny are twins, and they are the most beautiful men Griselda has ever seen. They are also the most dangerous. They want something from her: a lustrous blue marble, which they insist is in Con's apartment. Though they leave without hurting her, Griselda knows that next time, they won't be so amiable. To save herself, she must discover the secret of the marble - a secret with death at its core.