Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

 recommends that fans of literary fiction, mystery, and noir search out the work of Dorothy Hughes, whose crime novels were mostly published in the 1940s and early 50s. After falling out of print, her work has seen a resurgence in recent years.

Hughes published 14 crime and detective novels, and she also worked as a professional crime-fiction reviewer, so she knew her genre well. 

Her work teems with unreliable narrators, settings that feel like characters, and surprising plot twists--key elements of modern mysteries now. Three of Hughes' novels were made into films: 

 starring Humphrey Bogart, "The Fallen Sparrow," and "Ride the Pink Horse."

"I always kind of joke that there would be no "Gone Girl" or "Girl on the Train," or any of these without Dorothy Hughes first writing her books," say Brown. She says it feels like finding a lost treasure seeing Hughes’ work re-emerge.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Ask a bookseller

Emily Bright

Author

Her work teems with unreliable narrators, settings that feel like characters, and surprising plot twists--key elements of modern mysteries now.

Sarah Brown of Zenith Bookstore in Duluth recommends that fans of literary fiction, mystery, and noir search out the work of Dorothy Hughes, whose crime novels were mostly published in the 1940s and early 50s. 

Ask a Bookseller: Dorothy Hughes’ classic noir fiction

Go Deeper.

Like this?