• Hayes has seamlessly woven his literary tapestry between the realms of the stage and fiction. His novels often crackle with the same electrifying tension that pulses through The Desperate Hours. The novel that inspired this gripping drama was first unveiled in 1954, with a fresh edition resurfacing in 1985 courtesy of Carroll & Graf.

• Admirers of Hayes’s mastery of suspense can uncover another facet of his theatrical genius in the 1977 production Impolite Comedy: A Comedy in Three Acts. This intriguing work finds its home with Hayes’s enduring publisher, Samuel French, Inc.

• In the year 1936, Robert Sherwood penned The Petrified Forest, a thrilling play where a ruthless gangster and his band hold unsuspecting patrons captive in a diner. This chilling portrayal of Duke Mantee marked Humphrey Bogart's first significant foray as a cinema gangster, a journey that concluded with his role as Glenn Griffin in The Desperate Hours. Seek out The Petrified Forest through Dramatist’s Play Service.

• Ariel Dorfman's dramatic work Death and the Maiden (1991) echoes some of Hayes's narrative techniques, though imbued with a more profound gravitas. Much like Glenn Griffin, Dorfman’s Paulina takes a captive, driven by the need for vengeance. However, her quest is fueled by deeply personal wounds; she harbors suspicions that her prisoner is the very man who once raped and tortured her during her time as a political captive fifteen years prior. Yet, doubts linger about the true identity of her captive. This compelling play is available from Penguin USA.