The Expendable Man - Dorothy B. Hughes

In The Expendable Man, Dorothy B. Hughes masterfully crafts a suspenseful narrative that delves into themes of identity, prejudice, and the harrowing consequences of societal assumptions. Set against the vividly depicted backdrop of 1960s Arizona, the novel follows Dr. Hugh Denismore, a young African American physician whose act of kindness offering a ride to a stranded hitchhiker entangles him in a web of suspicion and danger. As the story unfolds, Hughes challenges readers to confront their own biases, making this work as thought-provoking today as it was upon its original publication.

Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir. In books like In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse she exposed a seething discontent underneath the veneer of twentieth-century prosperity. With The Expendable Man, first published in 1963, Hughes upends the conventions of the wrong-man narrative to deliver a story that engages readers even as it implicates them in the greatest of all American crimes.