In a Lonely Place
A serial killer narrates postwar Los Angeles, and never once thinks of himself as one.
Dix Steele is a war veteran living in Los Angeles on someone else’s money, and the reader spends the entire novel inside his head while women are strangled around the city. Hughes published it in 1947 and gave the investigation to a policeman’s wife rather than the policeman, which is part of why the book has aged so much better than its contemporaries. The Bogart film keeps the title and changes nearly everything else.
Recommended by 1 Person
Lou Berney
The faint throb of unease that runs through the story is brilliantly handled. In a Lonely Place is both way ahead of its time and exactly of its time, and it still chills me every time I read it.
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