Bill Kerwin's Reviews > The Expendable Man

Because I hate spoilers, but also have a visceral loathing for spoiler alerts, I can’t say much about this wonderful book without giving too much of it away. But if I’m careful, I think I can say something.

It tells us the story of Hugh Densmore, a young doctor with an internship at U.C.L.A., who—in the summer of 1962—is driving through the New Mexico desert on his way to a niece’s wedding in Phoenix. Against his better judgment, he picks up a young girl hitchhiking in an isolated spot, and this one act, innocent though imprudent, eventually leads him to be suspected of murder.

At first, it is hard to like Hugh, for, although he is an upright, well-behaved young man, he seems overly scrupulous, too concerned with appearances and affronts to his dignity to be a sympathetic character. But then, about a quarter of the way through the novel, we learn one simple fact about Hugh which Dorothy Hughes has been withholding from her reader, and this fact makes us look at Hugh’s character and his dilemma from a different angle.

Viewed in one way, Hughes’ authorial reticence is a detective writer’s stunt, similar to Christie’s celebrated omission in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but it is really much richer than that. It is an opportunity for the reader to reevaluate his assumptions and prejudices, and to see the facts in the case of Hugh Densmore—indeed American society itself—from an entirely new perspective.

Dorothy B. Hughes is well known, at least among mystery buffs, as the author of the novel In a Lonely Place, which was adapted into a memorable—but very different—movie. But this book is just as good—perhaps better—and should be remembered as well.