THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED ... 1938. Alexander Roth is hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles, where he hopes to reconnect with his self-absorbed, cutesy-poo girlfriend. A car stops to pick him up and he is soon plunged into a long nightmare from which there may be no escape. This fatalistic novel is a forgotten noir masterpiece that has languished for decades in the swamps of neglected crime fiction. In 1945, film director Edgar G Ulmer cranked out the movie version in a couple of weeks on a microscopic budget, and it is now widely recognized as one of the greatest gems in film noir history. The novel is its equal in every way. Legendary crime fiction author Lawrence Block provides a foreword unique to this edition.