Ride the Pink Horse (Canongate Crime) - Dorothy B. Hughes

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Ride the Pink Horse (Canongate Crime) - Dorothy B. Hughes

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During its Fiesta, a small desert town in New Mexico welcomes three strangers. Sailor, a hood from Chicago, is here to confront his boss, Sen (a crooked "weasel-faced" senator), in order to extort money. He is the only one who can finger Sen for setting up the murder of his wealthy wife, made to look like a robbery gone wrong. On the trail of both is Mac. Though from the same slums as Sailor, Mac decided on a different route and joined the police. He knows that Sailor can put Sen behind bars and wants him to testify in order to get him there. Though Sailor is aware that this is the right thing to do, he needs the money from Sen more. Over the space of a few days, the three characters collide with one another at regular intervals in a clumsy dance, one advancing as the other retreats, continually surrounded by the swirling colors, sounds, and smells of the festival. Ride the Pink Horse is a highly visual piece of crime fiction, and one that illustrates exactly why Hughes received numerous awards for her work. "Nobody but Dorothy Hughes can cast suspense into such an uncanny spell, and she's never done it better." – San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author
DOROTHY B. HUGHES was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1904. She lived and worked for the majority of her life in New Mexico, writing fourteen crime and mystery novels, of which three were successfully adapted for the screen: The Fallen Sparrow starring John Garfield, Ride the Pink Horse, directed by Robert Montgomery, and In a Lonely Place, starring Humphrey Bogart. She died in 1993.