The So Blue Marble

by Dorothy B. Hughes, Otto Penzler (Introduction)

Overview

Three well-heeled villains terrorize New York’s high society in pursuit of a rare and powerful gem

The society pages announce it before she even arrives: Griselda Satterlee, daughter of the princess of Rome, has left her career as an actress behind and is traveling to Manhattan to reinvent herself as a fashion designer. They also announce the return of the dashing Montefierrow twins to New York after a twelve-year sojourn in Europe. But there is more to this story than what’s reported, which becomes clear when the three meet one evening during a walk, and their polite conversation quickly takes a menacing turn. The twins are seeking a rare and powerful gem and they believe it’s stashed in the unused apartment where Griselda is staying. Baffled by the request, she pushes them away, but they won’t take no for an answer. When they return, accompanied by Griselda’s long-estranged younger sister, the murders begin...

Drenched in the glamour and luxury of the New York elite, The So Blue Marble is a perfectly Art Deco suspense novel in which nothing is quite as it seems. While different in style from her later books, Dorothy B. Hughes’s debut highlights her greatest strengths as an author, rendered with both the poetic language and the psychology of fear for which she is known today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613161050
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Series:	An American Mystery Classic
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	398,266
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) was a mystery author and literary critic. Born in Kansas City, she studied at Columbia University and won an award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets for her first book, the poetry collection Dark Certainty (1931). After writing several unsuccessful manuscripts, she published The So Blue Marble in 1940, winning praise for its terse, hard-boiled prose.

Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are The Fallen Sparrow (1942), Ride the Pink Horse (1946), In a Lonely Place (1947). All three were made into successful films. In the early fifties, Hughes largely stopped writing fiction, preferring to focus on criticism, for which she would go on to win an Edgar Award. In 1978, the Mystery Writers of America presented Hughes with the Grand Master Award for literary achievement.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Editorial Reviews

08/06/2018
First published in 1940, this delightful entry in Otto Penzler’s new American Mystery Classics series was the debut of MWA Grand Master Hughes (1904–1993), best known today for In a Lonely Place, which became a film starring Humphrey Bogart. After a brief stint as an actress in Hollywood, Griselda Satterlee has returned to Manhattan to pursue a career as a fashion designer. One night, while returning to her ex-husband’s East Side apartment, where she is staying, she is accosted by two frightening young men who demand that she give them the “blue marble.” What follows is nonstop action, with menace and daring exploits bursting through the smooth veneer of upper-class life. Students of cultural history will enjoy stepping back into a New York where gentlemen wear top hats when going out on the town, and ladies, when hastily packing to escape from psychopaths, remember to include in their suitcases “hats with tissue paper crumpled in their hollows.” That Hughes was a poet is clear from the jangling rhythm of her prose. Readers new to this forgotten classic are in for a treat. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Extraordinary . . . [Hughes’s] brilliant descriptive powers make and unmake reality."

The New Yorker

"You will have to read [The So Blue Marble] for yourself, and if you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don’t say we didn’t warn you."

The New York Times Book Review