Woman in the dark

On a dark night a young woman seeks refuge at an isolated house. She is hurt and frightened. The man and woman who live there take her in. But their decency is utterly unequipped to deal with the Woman in the Dark, or with the designs of the men who want her.

First published in installments in Liberty magazine [in 1933] and now rediscovered after many years, Woman in the Dark shows Dashiell Hammett at the peak of his narrative powers. With an introduction by Robert B. Parker, the author of the celebrated Spenser novels.

A one-time detective and a maser of deft understatement, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel.