15. The Body on the Bench by Dorothy B. Hughes

Also known as The Davidian Report, this original paperback has held up quite well.  The book opens well, with a vague protagonist, Steve Wintress, whose flight to LA is delayed by fog.  He is clearly suspicious and careful, you can't tell if he is paranoid or if this is just the Cold War early '50s.  He is on a mission to meet a man who will give him info about another man, Davidian, who has a report.  The delay and subsequent introduction to a too friendly Federal man (named Haig Armour), a shy young girl and a keen soldier named Reuben (a rube, get it).  When he does finally get to the airport,  he finds his friend and the man who was supposed to meet him, dead outside at a picnic bench.  Now he has to find the missing man with the report himself.

I was mildly annoyed reading this book.  It takes place in the universe of I was a Communist for the FBI, a universe I can never be sure really ever existed or was mostly made up by McCarthy and keen fiction writers.  The Commies are everywhere, but especially running used bookstores and sidewalk popcorn machines.  And once you join them, the party is ruthless and there is no escape.  It's a nice set up for a hard-boiled protagonist, as there is no escape, but I'm not entirely convinced.  The other annoying thing is that Hughes doesn't let the reader know what the protagonist is doing and who he actually is until well into the story.  I guess we are just to assume that the Commies want something and the FBI wants to stop them and that is sufficient for the 1952 reader.

The locations and the writing is quite strong.  The characters are also substantive so it's a mostly enjoyable read. I just couldn't get deeply connected to the actual quest, and less so to the human connections around it.  Steve is slowly revealed to be the grizzled hero that one could like, but it's too little too late.  This is later in Hughes' career and she is much more in command of her material than her earlier works, but it still feels like she is searching for something that she can't quite find.