Many thanks to Richard Layne and Sergio Angelini for recommending this, which I just finished and liked very much. I wish I’d gotten around to reading it earlier. It would have come in handy when I used to teach the film version. In the novel, the character of Dix (played by Bogart in the film film) is a serial killer, passing as a writer. The novel has a wonderful feel for mood. It’s all darkness, fog, deserted beaches, drive-in restaurants, late-night cinemas,  and the inside of a disturbed man’s head; a man who wants the easy life, has no intention of working if he can help it, and who has trouble finding meaning after the war; he and Laurel (the Gloria Grahame character in the film), recognise each other’s ambitions, incestuous siblings under the mink so to speak, but only one of them is willing to kill for it. There is a fascinating depiction of post-war Beverly Hills, a small town with a lurking darkness, here not attributable to the film industry. The Dix/Laurel coupling is the structural opposite of the Brub/Sylvia, the latter Dix’s old army friend, from the upper class but choosing to work as a cop, and his cool and intelligent wife. The denoument involves Sylvia disguised as Laurel and brings out all of Dix’ psychosis. I learned two words new to me, to have the megrims (to be depressed) and more interestingly, to be stoney, which in the lingo of the day, as per this novel at least, means to be broke. I want to read more Dorothy B. Hughes.