The second in the Hoke Moseley series with a very different approach than the first in the series. Holes ex splits for California and leaves his daughters in his care. So now he has his daughters to worry about as well as his partner who gets locked out of her parents home. Around all this he solves the Overdose / murder of a small time punk. Another good read rough presentation at times and humour. I’m also learning more about Miami as I continue with this series and the JDM books.

I stopped reading with about 70 pages left to go. I truly enjoyed the first Hoke Moseley novel, and was eager to read this one. About halfway through the novel, I realized that nothing had actually happened in the novel. It was a crime novel where the crime had been committed in the first 20 pages of the novel, but rarely got mentioned in the novel. The novel is basically about Hoke dealing with the fact that his young Cubana partner is single and pregnant and that his ex-wife has dumped his two teenage daughters on him by sending them without notice on a bus, unaccompanied. Willeford has some truly strange concepts of parenting and how parents would actually talk to their kids. I had to stop reading when Hoke takes his daughters up to the roof of his apartment building to talk to them about sex. Some of the things that he says are truly disturbing. I realize the book was written in the 1980s, but I was a teenager in the twenties, and I can't imagine my parents or any of my friends parents talking about sex in that way. The book is incredibly sexist and fairly racist even for it's time period. I was really hoping to read all of the Hoke Mosely series, but I'm not sure that will happen.

È il primo libro di questo autore che leggo e devo dire che la scrittura mi piace particolarmente. È un libro leggero e che va dritto al punto senza troppe pretese. Lo definirei un giallo con risvolti divertenti che alleggeriscono la trama ed un finale non scontato.

A perfectly good way to spend your time. These books are really interesting; there's not a lot that keeps you coming back to them-- they don't have the hard boiled-ness of Jim Thompson, or the witty repartee of Dashiell Hammett or the grittiness of James Elroy. But they are pleasant, and you truly don't know where they're going, so I guess that's enough?

Secondo libro della quadrilogia di quel personaggio di cui mi sono innamorato dopo aver letto il primo e che adesso, dopo il secondo, si è preso ufficialmente un posto tra i miei preferiti.

Hoke è un personaggio dall'aspetto fatiscente, che abita posti fatiscenti e intrattiene fatiscenti relazioni personali mentre, da dietro le quinte, tira le redini del dipartimento Omicidi di Miami, anch'esso fatiscente, oltre che quelle della vita delle persone legate a lui: tante pecorelle smarrite che si trovano ad avere un disperato bisogno di un pastore decisamente sui generis: Hoke è un personalista che mette a disposizione di chi sceglie lui il suo pragmatismo, senza ovviamente ricevere né chiedere in cambio alcun titolo o riconoscimento, per carità. Lui non li vorrebbe nemmeno, sa che comporterebbero solo responsabilità in più, delle quali decisamente non ha bisogno, finché riesce a sopravvivere, ad avere un pacchetto di Kool in tasca e a dare la caccia ai demoni.

Il suo lavoro da sbirro esige freddezza e assenza di peli, sia sullo stomaco che sulla lingua, ed è per questo che la narrativa risulta espositiva piuttosto che analitica, sebbene in questo secondo volume l'autore ci lasci sondare in qualche modo la parte emotivo sentimentale di un personaggio che non smette di stupire.

Per quanto riguarda la scrittura, la parte migliore a mio avviso sono i dialoghi che Willeford sa scrivere, contraddistinti da un efficacissimo e crudo realismo: nell'intento di tratteggiare un ritratto sociale, piuttosto che dialogare simbolicamente con il lettore, l'autore ci proietta con effetti quasi fisici nei suoi luoghi: alberghi trascurati, case popolari, giardini pubblici e tutta la parte oscura di quella Luna che una Miami che fatica a trovare compromessi sociali tra le etnie che la abitano: è quasi come ascoltare le notizie del telegiornale e nel frattempo guardare i servizi giornalistici che le corredano: vedere le assurdità più grandi venire dalla vita reale e non dalla fiction la dice lunga. E proprio come in un telegiornale, Willeford non ha pretese sull'interpretazione che il lettore darà riguardo alle notizie. Lui ci dice come stanno le cose, tocca a noi trovarci un senso. Se proprio ne abbiamo voglia.

Questa serie si conferma una delle letture d'evasione che preferisco. Vorrei ne uscisse uno all'anno, e invece sono solo quattro.

Best part: La spiegazione del concetto di "Prossimità" che Hoke da al giovane pugile. Possibile che debba spiegare la prossimità proprio ad un pugile?

I’ve never read anything comparable to the Hoke Mosley books, which have a uniquely off-kilter sensibility that embraces all the tropes of the police procedural while also subtly undercutting and parodying the genre. Hoke is a one of a kind character, slightly less racist and sexist here than in the first book, at times startlingly kind and tender, but also given to alarming hardness and cruelty. He’s a great detective who here faces a pretty conventional murder mystery— but the ending isn’t what you’d expect. And the final punchline is cynical and hilarious.

Hill Street Cucks

It does have its moments, for example, when Hoke is reading the Riot Act to the "Designer" skag.

But mostly it's just Family Man BS. Plus a bunch of "look-how-intersting-Cubans-are" bullshit. They're not. They're just Mexicans.

I'm surprised he didn't start building a deck and coaching youth soccer in his free time.

Certified zzzzzzzzz. Or, alternatively, certified Diversity content. Same thing. But, natch, some of you can just never get enough Diversity.

Charles Willeford is a writer I'm not sure I know fully how to parse yet. I realised only in retrospect that I did really quite enjoy his first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues, more than my kind of negative review of it from back then would suggest. This one, the follow-up and second in the series, feels like a different animal altogether.

I certainly didn't expect it to be not really that much of a post-pulp/post-hardboiled noir novel at all. It feels a lot more like a latter-period Patricia Highsmith book in its almost aggressive plotlessness and claustrophobic focus on the minute details and processes of the characters.

I've said before that while plotlessness isn't my favourite form of fiction, I don't mind it so long as the novel has something that keeps the reader's interest in place of plot -- in this book that's obviously meant to be the black humour, but it isn't really as funny as Miami Blues, and also suffers in the confusion of whether we are supposed to be laughing at Hoke Moseley and his constant, strangely confident misogyny, or if those parts of his character are supposed to be the most sincere.

Maybe I'm again just not as sure how to react to this book and will come around better in time -- if there's any mark of a quality writer, it has to be someone who keeps the reader thinking and shifting their opinion of their work long after finishing the actual book, so I do give Willeford points for that.

This is my kinda crime book. While I love various genre fiction, I don't read a lot of mysteries because, at this mnemonically-challenged point in my life, the puzzle aspect just doesn't appeal all that much. Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd, indeed, but, more importantly, who can remember? So, New Hope for the Dead, full to bursting with the atmosphere (the mini-malls and apartment blocks of fungible, lower-middle class Miami exurbs that perfectly embody the disappointment and alienation of a post-industrial, Reagan-era America) and attitude (weary, jaded professionalism) that I love, but with a perfunctory, cognitively undemanding whodunit, is made-to-order for someone with my decidedly un-Sherlockian powers of ratiocination. I'd read and loved the first Hoke Moseley novel, Miami Blues, a long time ago and I picked this up under the mistaken impression that Hoke was about to have his own FX series starring Paul Giamatti. The show idea was scrapped, as it turns out, and, while I'm disappointed that I won't get to enjoy a favorite actor in a suitably irascible role, I'm grateful to have reconnected with a writer I read with relish.

Charles Willeford is a great writer. This book showcases that. It is a heartfelt book about a hard-boiled detective. There is stuff here about his work, family, and friendships. A very well thought out character study of Hoke.

Charles Willeford is really so good and has a great understanding of characters. I liked this book a bit better than Miami Blues. It was a little shaggier and gave us some more time with Hoke and his personal life. There's some cringe-inducing misogyny and racism in this book, but most is coming from a character perspective or is working to inform that character's worldview. Granted, most of the time that racism and misogyny goes unchallenged, but in those cases it is also working to build the setting and the supporting characters which is unlike a lot of other pulp writers who use it solely for exploitation. Hoke Moseley is a weird central character for a story like this and it's in his narrative that Willeford's bizarro sense of humor really shines through. It's hard to understand sometimes why Willeford chooses to give the reader certain bits of information about his characters and sometimes it makes me wonder if he was just padding his manuscript a bit to make sure he got it up to where the publisher would like to see. But even when the information is extraneous, it works. Because it's ultimately a mystery/detective story, these bits of information feel important even if they aren't and at the very least, they add more depth to his characters. Willeford's understanding of character psychology and skill to write both shaggily and clearly at the same time are impressive and make for a far better pulp read than anyone would ever expect. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

10/2015

After Miami Blues, which was about the bad guy as much as Hoke Mosely, the good guy, comes a meandering tale of Hoke's life. Dark and gritty in spots, gentle and likable overall.