Thanks, Dan. Dwyer Murphy is a novelist in his own write (sorry...) with a new one (THE HOUSE ON BUZZARD'S BAY) coming out next month.

He's included some nice quotes from various Hughes novels, and provides a nice summary of the power of her writing at its best:

Her novels have a veneer of everyday normalcy, a certain middle-class elegance, even. But danger--crime, guilt, desperation, and despair--finds its way into the lives of her characters and slowly gnaws away at their inadequate defenses as the world around them begins to melt away and all they’re left with is an uncanny, unforgiving darkness.