Dorothy B. Hughes (August 10, 1904 - May 06, 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.

Dorothy B Hughes (1904-93) grew up in Kansas City. After university she worked in journalism and wrote a prize-winning book of poems. Her first thriller was published to great acclaim in 1940, with thirteen others appearing over the next ten years; the best known were Ride the Pink Horse (1946) and In a Lonely Place (1947), both of which made into classic noir films, as was The Fallen Sparrow (1942). During the 1950s Dorothy B Hughes’ domestic responsibilities led her to concentrate on journalism but in 1963 her last novel The Expendable Man came out. The New York Times called this her ‘finest work to date, of unusual stature both as a suspense story and as a straight novel’; in 1987 the critic HRF Keating chose it as one of his 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books. Dorothy B Hughes won the prestigious Edgar Award in 1950 and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1978. She lived most of her adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico.