The Expendable Man

A young American doctor, driving his parents’ white Cadillac between Los Angeles and his family home in Phoenix, Arizona, stops in a stretch of desert highway and gets caught up in a murder. But The Expendable Man is far more than a crime novel. Just as Hughes' earlier books had engaged with the political issues of the 1940s – the legacy of the Depression, and the struggles against fascism and rascism – so The Expendable Man, published in 1963 during Kennedy’s presidency, evokes the emerging social, racial and moral tensions of the time.