Dorothy B Hughes

DOROTHY B HUGHES (1904-93) grew up in Kansas City. After university she worked in journalism and wrote a prize-winning book of poems. Her first thriller was published to great acclaim in 1940, with thirteen others appearing over the next ten years; the best known were Ride the Pink Horse (1946) and In a Lonely Place (1947), both of which made into classic noir films, as was The Fallen Sparrow (1942). During the 1950s Dorothy B Hughes’ domestic responsibilities led her to concentrate on journalism but in 1963 her last novel The Expendable Man came out. The New York Times called this her ‘finest work to date, of unusual stature both as a suspense story and as a straight novel’; in 1987 the critic HRF Keating chose it as one of his 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books. Dorothy B Hughes won the prestigious Edgar Award in 1950 and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1978. She lived most of her adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico.