<p><em>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</em>. 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.</p><p>Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir. In books like <em>In a Lonely Place </em>and <em>Ride the Pink Horse</em> 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.</p>