The Expendable Man (1963)

A very smart, cleverly written and well paced noir. Hughes places an interesting spin on the wrong man noir genre here, with a soaring critique and indictment of societal prejudices and injustices. ( )

A tense page-turner, this book has a twist about 1/3 of the way through which is subtly done, fits well with what came before and changes the direction of the book. The whole book, even the parts where the characters are doing mundane things, is very suspenseful because you never know what’s going to happen. It opens with Hugh Densmore driving to Phoenix for his niece’s wedding. He’s a medical intern, poor and careful, but also from a comfortable, loving, supportive family with deep roots in Phoenix. In an out-of-character move, he picks up a young female hitchhiker. Hugh finds her hard to comprehend as she’s sly and manipulative and he can’t believe that her family could be so neglectful. He finally drops her off in Phoenix but has uncomfortable feelings that his good deed will come back to haunt him – he’s proven right when she turns up murdered. From then on, Hugh, though innocent, is constantly on the line between innocence and guilt – he wonders if he’s acting the way an innocent man would, tries to keep his family from discovering that he’s under suspicion, and when the investigators start to focus on him, he is forced to try to discover the truth. The writing is tight and nicely characterizes the thoughts of an accused but innocent man. Hughes also captures the heat and occasionally the claustrophobia of Phoenix as well as an America on the brink of change. Recommended. ( )

Wow! I woke up in the middle of the night feeling I had to finish this book before I could go back to sleep! Hughes creates the tension felt by the protagonist, a young Los Angeles doctor driving to Phoenix for a family wedding, so well that I felt just as anxious as he did all the way through the book, starting at the very beginning in which his discomfort at picking up a young female hitchhiker might seem a little out of proportion. There is a reason, and it is the famous "surprise" of the book, which I will not reveal, although there is a lot I could say about it. Once in Phoenix, in the midst of a lovely family gathering and an introduction to a beautiful, poised, and intelligent young woman, he is still uneasy about the girl, and then finds out she has been killed. Soon, the police are after him, and it becomes up to him to find the real killer and prove his innocence. Throughout, Hughes masterfully creates the scene, the building tension, and the characters.

There was one thing that bothered me about this book, which was written in 1963, and I have to consider it an artifact of the times, but every single character in the book is utterly appalled and disgusted by the idea of abortion.

The Expendable Man is a expertly crafted crime noir novel. Hughes prose is spot on and the plot will keep the reader thoroughly engaged until the end. ( )

Dr. Hugh Densmore is making the long drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix when he stops to offer a ride to a young hitch-hiker. When, a few days later, she is found dead in Scottsdale the local police suspect him. The circumstantial evidence is convincing; he is a doctor and she recently had an abortion; she was seen in his car and at his motel door the night before she was murdered; he doesn't come forth to identify the body when the police ask for help with their investigation.

It is up to Densmore to prove his own innocence since the police are satisfied he is their man. Only the local Scottsdale sheriff is willing to keep an open mind and oppose an immediate arrest. With the help of a woman he meets at his niece's wedding and a high-profile lawyer who agrees to represent him, Densmore retraces the murder victim's steps and realizes that the fifteen year old told him a pack of lies about her life and her reason for hitching a ride to Arizona.

This is a classic noir mystery with a twist. Hughes got the atmosphere just right; the desert so beige and barren; the tiny town of Scottsdale with the police station in the basement of the town hall. This is Scottsdale before it became one long luxury mall with gated communities and golf courses. The all-night cafe with the air-conditioning that sometimes doesn't work; the streetlights that barely cast any illumination; the desert sky so full of stars it seems fake; the locals who don't trust anyone not born in their town or anyone who is different. Densmore moves through this landscape, at times not realizing the danger he is in. This is a world very different from the cool and safe corridors of a major teaching hospital.

The twist comes about one-third of the way through the novel and it made me stop short and go back to reread parts of the beautifully written prose. Hughes plays fair and has written a 1963 noir detective novel which is a time capsule of the era. ( )