Dorothy B. Hughes is one of those writer’s writer types that readers get too after they’ve read the noir novels everyone has heard of and are desperate for more. With classics like In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse to her name, she is deserving of a place in the upper echelon. The Expendable Man is another plank in that argument.
Hugh Densmore is a young doctor driving from L.A. to Phoenix for his sister’s wedding. Phoenix is his hometown, and his whole family is waiting for him. So he’s reluctant to pick up a hitchhiker on the edge of the desert. Still, she’s a young girl all alone in a desolate area, so against his better judgment he pulls over and lets her get in the car. She tells Hugh her name is Iris Croom, and that she’s going to visit with he aunt in Phoenix. Hugh knows she’s lying, but it’s none of his business. He drops her off at a bus station at the nearest city and pays for her fare, unwilling to let her ride with him all the way home.
Unfortunately for Hugh, that’s not the last he hears of the girl known to him as Iris Croom. A few days later, he sees in the paper that a girl matching her description has turned up dead. As he becomes more and more certain the body is Iris’s, he starts to worry that the police will be able to track him down as the man who gave her a ride. Will they believe in his innocence? Will they even listen to his story?
I don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice to say Dorothy B. Hughes has a trick up her sleeve, and it’s a knockout today just as it must have been sixty years ago when The Expendable Man was written. It occurs early and alters everything that comes before it, and inevitably tinges all that comes after.
The plot itself is no great feat of originality, with its innocent man desperately searching for the guilty party in order to clear his name. But in Hughes hands, this shopworn cliche is brought to live, vivid and immersive all over again.
Fair warning for the faint of heart: The Expendable Man was written a long time ago and reflects certain aspects of life back then realistically. But if you’re in the mood for a noir novel par excellence, this should be right up your alley.