Excerpt:
In 1947, an excellent thriller needed only four characters: two women, one a respectable policeman's wife the other a woman of questionable character, and two men, one a police detective the other a serial killer. With these four characters and a small supporting cast, Dorothy Hughes created an excellent noir thriller In A Lonely Place that can more than hold its own against any of her male contemporaries. I'd argue it can hold it's own against anyone writing crime novels today, as well, and it may end up one of my top ten favorite reads this year.
The Los Angelos of In a Lonely Place is in the grip of a serial killer, a strangler who has murdered one woman every 30 days for the past six months, when Dickson "Dix" Steele decides to contact his old war buddy Brub Nicolai. The two have lost contact since the war ended and they each returned from England. Brub is married now--his wife Sylvia is nervous about the strangler and worried for her police detective husband who has been working the case for months. Dix tolerates Sylvia while milking Brub for details about the strangler case claiming they will help him with the detective novel he is writing, secretly excited by the thrill of being so close to the police officers who are hunting him...
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