Part of Series
On their second honeymoon, a woman’s husband is arrested for murder Griselda Satterlee is beginning to regret her second marriage to Con. Their honeymoon was supposed to be joyous, romantic, and full of glamor—all of the things their first marriage wasn’t—but instead they are spending it on Long Beach, a Navy town whose fleets have all shipped out to sea. The tedium of Long Beach cannot compare to the insult Con gives Griselda one night, when he picks up a stunning blonde at a bar, leaving his wife in the dust. When he returns to their hotel, Con explains to Griselda that the woman was planning to shoot herself, so he took her out of the bar to confiscate her gun. Griselda is just beginning to believe him when the blonde turns up dead, and Con is arrested for her murder. Griselda will have to work quickly to salvage their honeymoon, or Con will be forced to trade their bridal suite for death row.
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. A New York–based mystery, it won praise for its hardboiled prose, which was due, in part, to Hughes’s editor, who demanded she cut 25,000 words from the book. Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946). Both 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.
