In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes & Ray's film adaptation

Dorothy B. Hughes was an American crime writer, literary critic and historian. Hughes wrote fourteen crime and detective novels, primarily in the hardboiled and noir styles and is best known for her intense, ground-breaking serial-killer novel In a Lonely Place. According to various critics Hughes deserves the same recognition as Chandler, Cain and Hammett but hasn't yet got it.

In relation to the novel, Max Decharne writes, ‘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.' (Hardboiled Hollywood: The Origins of Great Crime Films)

First published after 1947, In a lonely place is the story of Dix Steele, a former fighter pilot, moved to L.A. after the war, looking for a new life. But the city is gripped by fear of a murderer in its midst. Dix, however, is not scared. And when he bumps into his old friend Brub Nicolai, now a detective on the trail of the culprit, he is excited to follow the police's progress. A dark and terrible truth is revealed, in a noir novel like no other.

Written with controlled elegance, Hughes’ 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 inspired Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.

Although different in may ways from the book, Ray’s film adaptation is often considered a pinnacle of the classic film noir era. According to Wikipedia, Hughes was “not bothered by the changes” made by Ray and its two script writers. It could perhaps be that Hughes recognized a good movie, even though it was not her idea. Presumably it helped her book sales.

This meetup is created to discuss both Hughes' novel and Ray's film.
Details:
- Read In a Lonely Place (1947)
- Rent the film using one of the available streaming services and watch it in your own time.
- At 8.00pm EET time the online meeting will start to discuss book & adaptation.
Film: In a Lonely Place (1950)
director: Nicholas Ray
Running Time: 1h 34 min