but in 1958 he was known mostly for lurid, gossipy true-crime stories; he’d published two collections of middlebrow micro-noirs under the titles Afternoon in the Attic and Some Like It Gory. His tone in discussing Lydie’s disappearance keeps to this wink-wink, imitation-Hitchcock vein, playing up a smirking sordidness for a readership of middle-class voyeurs.
