The Expendable Man

Download or read book The Expendable Man written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It was surprising what old experiences remembered could do to a presumably educated, civilized man.” And Hugh Denismore, a young doctor driving his mother’s Cadillac from Los Angeles to Phoenix, is eminently educated and civilized. He is privileged, would seem to have the world at his feet, even. Then why does the sight of a few redneck teenagers disconcert him? Why is he reluctant to pick up a disheveled girl hitchhiking along the desert highway? And why is he the first person the police suspect when she is found dead in Arizona a few days later? 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.

Download or read book An Expendable Man written by Margaret Edds and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006-10 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it possible for an innocent man to come within nine days of execution? An Expendable Man answers that question through detailed analysis of the case of Earl Washington Jr., a mentally retarded, black farm hand who was convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of a 19-year-old mother of three in Culpeper, Virginia. He spent almost 18 years in Virginia prisons--9 1/2 of them on death row--for a murder he did not commit. This book reveals the relative ease with which individuals who live at society's margins can be wrongfully convicted, and the extraordinary difficulty of correcting such a wrong once it occurs. Margaret Edds makes the chilling argument that some other "expendable men" almost certainly have been less fortunate than Washington. This, she writes, is "the secret, shameful underbelly" of America's retention of capital punishment. Such wrongful executions may not happen often, but anyone who doubts that innocent people have been executed in the United States should remember the remarkable series of events necessary to save Earl Washington Jr. from such a fate.

Download or read book The Blackbirder written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A suspenseful World War II–era novel from “the world’s finest female noir writer . . . [featuring] a resourceful spy heroine” (Sarah Weinman, Los Angeles Review of Books). Julie Guilles has escaped to New York from Nazi-occupied France. But that doesn’t mean she’s safe. The German invasion put an end to her glamorous, sheltered life in Paris three years ago, and because she entered America illegally, she has to live in the shadows, a refugee without papers, never quite sure whom she can trust. When an old acquaintance is gunned down in front of her apartment building, Julie worries she could be next. To evade the NYPD, FBI, and Gestapo—basically anyone who might want to arrest, deport, or kill her—she must make her way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in search of “the Blackbirder.” She’s heard whispers about the trafficker who supposedly carries people across the southern border—for a hefty price. Julie has nothing but a smuggled diamond necklace with which to pay, and before the danger’s over, she may once again have to take a perilous stand in the war that’s plunged the world into chaos . . . Palpably tense from the first page, The Blackbirder is a dark, riveting tale of intrigue and espionage from an “extraordinary” Mystery Writers of America Grand Master (The New Yorker). “Without question this is the best book that Dorothy Hughes has written.” —The New York Times “Sleek suspense . . . grand reading.” —Kirkus Reviews “The master.” —Sara Paretsky, author of the V. I. Warshawski Novels

Download or read book In a Lonely Place written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dix Steele is back in town, and 'town' is post-war LA. His best friend Brub is on the force of the LAPD, and as the two meet in country clubs and beach bars, they discuss the latest case: a strangler is preying on young women in the dark. Dix listens with interest as Brub describes their top suspect, as yet unnamed. Dix loves the dark and women in equal measure, so he knows enough to watch his step, though when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. The American Dream is showing its seamy underside.

Download or read book Dread Journey written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A starlet on a transcontinental train fears her director may be trying to kill her in this novel by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Dorothy B. Hughes. Four years after she arrived in Los Angeles, Kitten Agnew has become a star. Though beautiful and talented, she’d be nowhere without Vivien Spender: Hollywood’s most acclaimed director—and its most dangerous. But Kitten knew what she was getting into when she got involved with him; she had heard the stories of Viv’s past discoveries: Once he discarded them, they ended up in a chorus line, a sanatorium, or worse. She knows enough of his secrets that he wouldn’t dare destroy her career. But he may be willing to kill her. On a train from Los Angeles to Chicago, Kitten learns that Viv is planning to offer her roommate a part that was meant for her. If she lets him betray her, her career will be over. But fight for the part, and she will be fighting for her life as well.

Download or read book Expendable written by James Alan Gardner and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where the marginalized of society are sent into space on suicide missions, one woman decides to fight back: “Riveting” (David Feintuch). In Expendable, the first volume of the League of Peoples, Festina Ramos is assigned to escort an unstable admiral to planet Melaquin. Little is known about Melaquin, for every explorer who’s landed there has disappeared. It’s come to be known as the “planet of no return,” and the High Council has made a habit of sending troublesome admirals there in an attempt to get rid of them. It’s clear that this is intended to be Ramos’s last mission, but she doesn’t plan on dying, no matter how expendable she may be.

Download or read book Ride the Pink Horse written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the annual Fiesta, three desperate men converge in a perilous New Mexico town in this “extraordinary” crime novel (The New Yorker). It takes four days for Sailor to travel to New Mexico by bus. He arrives broke, sweaty, and ready to get what’s his. It’s the annual Fiesta, and the locals burn an effigy of Zozobra so that their troubles follow the mythical character into the fire. But for former senator Willis Douglass, trouble is just beginning. Sailor was Willis’s personal secretary when his wife died in an apparent robbery-gone-wrong. Only Sailor knows it was Willis who ordered her murder, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut in exchange for a little bit of cash. On Sailor’s tail is a cop who wants the senator for more than a payoff. As Fiesta rages on, these three men will circle one another in a dance of death, as they chase truth, money, and revenge.