Dorothy B. Hughes

Who was Dorothy B. Hughes?

Dorothy B. Hughes was an American crime writer and literary critic. Hughes wrote fourteen crime and detective novels, primarily in the hardboiled and noir styles, and is best known for the novels In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse.

Born Dorothy Belle Flanagan in Kansas City, Missouri, she studied journalism and after graduating from the University of Missouri with her B.J. degree in 1924 worked in that field in Missouri, New Mexico, and New York. She did graduate work in journalism at the University of New Mexico and at Columbia University but did not receive a degree from either institution.

Hughes’ first published book, Dark Certainty was a volume of poetry, which was the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition.

In 1940, she published her first mystery novel The So Blue Marble followed by eight more mystery novels in the 1940s. In addition to her novels, Hughes also wrote a history of the University of New Mexico and a critical study of writer Erle Stanley Gardner. In 1951 she received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category of Outstanding Mystery Criticism and in 1978 she was given the MWA's Grand Master award.