The Davidian Report by Dorothy B. Hughes (1952)

Everyone searches for the mysterious report that will prevent a nightmare future.

Mystery Review: The Davidian Report (also known as The Body on the Bench) was the penultimate novel by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993), the queen of hard-boiled noir. It's more of a Cold War spy thriller, but still reads like a tough-guy detective story. Not as good as her very best, but a quality read with a gem on every page. She writes with a poet's eye and creates scenes seen only by a slumming street corner cynic: "the lobby smoldered in its customary shadow," "a worn leather armchair, eternally holding the sag of a large man," "what once had been the refuge of old men and pigeons," "the touch of her slippers on the staircase blurred back to his ears," "early twilight sifted down." An airplane in the fog is a "machine creeping through gray fur." From a car one sees "the shops growing more shabby in neighborhoods left behind as the crocodile metropolis crawled westward." Her descriptions are so carefully carved that the reader begins to take them for granted. In The Davidian Report Hughes is always intelligent, precise, aware. The suspense builds quietly till it hums just below the consciousness like summer cicadas. Given this was published in 1952, there's a daub of ardent Americanism, but mostly it's buried with the desperation of characters living in a world without sincerity or honesty. Nobody trusts no one. Having read over half her novels (I'm on a mission), Dorothy Hughes has never disappointed, and The Davidian Report is no exception.  [4★]