"Fear wasn't a jagged split of light cleaving you; fear wasn't a cold fist in your entrails; fear wasn't something you could face and demolish with your arrogance. Fear was the fog, creeping about you, seeping into your pores and flesh and bone. Fear was a girl whispering a word over and again, a small word you refused to hear although the whisper was a scream in your ears, a dreadful scream you could never forget."

Hughes more than deserves a seat at the boys' table with Raymond Chandler and others. This particular story resembles Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (1952) in the sense that the point of view is of a sociopathic mind. Although it isn't as visceral or brutal, Hughes portrays Dix Steele and his slow spiral into his personal hell powerfully. He's a freeloader with no sense of direction in his life, and in his view, all women are "cheats, liars, whores". Befriending an old war buddy is self-destructive, but he's too self-absorbed to realize it.

Without giving anything away, the misogynistic aspect has a different dynamic than in other noirs and is ultimately subverted. I don't know how aware Hughes was of this, but it feels like she wanted to do things differently than her colleagues.

The movie adaptation has very little to do with the novel, but it matches the cold essence of the book. It's a bitter romance where the characters feed each other's weaknesses which results in paranoia, jealousy, violence, and hopelessness. Humphrey Bogart's performance is one of his best, and the bleak dreamy shadows accentuate the most harrowing scenes by placing focus on his face. The ending is just *chef's kiss*.