Femmes Fatales
2 total works
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?
'Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir' New York Review of Books
'Puts Chandler to shame ... Hughes is the master we keep turning to'Sara Paretsky
After the war, cynical veteran Dix Steele has moved to L.A., a city terrified by a strangler preying on young women. Bumping into an old friend, now a detective working on the case, Dix is thrilled by closely following the progress of the police. And meeting his new neighbour, sultry and beautiful actress Laurel Gray, brings even more excitement into his life. But the strangler is still prowling the streets - and Laurel may be in more danger than she realises...
In a Lonely Place was adapted for film in 1950, with Humphrey Bogart as Dix Steele.