The Hoke Moseley novels are about a detective, but they are not novels in the detective genre. Charles Willeford never dangles any clues or misdirection in front of the readers, and the actual crime that needs to be solved doesn't happen until the tail end of the book. Instead, he holds the readers interest with remarkably vivid portraits of his characters, various locales in Miami area and of course the themes he brings up (How easily decent (but gullable) people can sometimes be turned to crime, the american dream, sub-urban life, modern art, mid-life crisis, public education, etc.). Charles keeps a swift pace and never lingers on any one particular issue, always rewarding the readers with more interesting tid-bits to chew on, but admittedly, readers accustomed to more formulaic crime novels will be left in the cold (not only does the crime only happen at the end of the book, but for the majority of the novel Hoke is on leave from the force and very intent on never coming back). This novel challenges the conventions of the set formulas and challenges the reader (if only so slightly), but hey, I would expect nothing less from a literary-genre novel.

"Life is short and deserves a better cause."
- Karl Kraus

"'By the way, Dr. Fairbairn said I was overdue for my prostate massage'. Helen signed, and then she smiled. 'I'll get the Crisco.'"
- Charles Willeford, Sideswipe



Book three in Willeford's four Hoke Moseley mystery novels. Hoke has had a breakdown and is sent to live with his father and his stepmother on Singer Island. His partner is pregnant and living with him and his daughters. His daughters have their own challenges. Meanwhile, a psychopath has met an old man in jail and is putting together a team for a perfect crime. Sometimes, not even a meltdown lets you get away from work for more than a month.

Willeford has an off-beat naturalism that might not be everyone's jam, but he's my jam and toast for sure. He has an insight into human nature and Miami that is hard to rival.

Now that I have finished all four of Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley novels, all I can say is that I wish the author had lived long enough to write more of them. Sideswipe is my favorite of the police procedurals set in Miami. Hoke is a police sergeant in homicide who is tired of his work, so he decides to live on an island north of the city where his wealthy father owns a number of properties. Parallel to the tale of Hoke's disenchantment is the tale of a retiree whose wife leaves him because he has been accused (falsely) of molesting a 9-year-old girl. (It was she who molested him.) In prison, he meets Troy Loudon, a criminal psychopath who is planning a heist.

Willeford gives us one chapter of Hoke followed by another with Stanley Sienkewicz, the retiree, until they come together at the end.

Unlike most police novels, Willeford's detective is decidedly soft-edged. He keeps his false teeth in a glass at night, and he must put up with his teenaged daughters who have been foisted on him by his ex-wife, who ran off with a rich ballplayer. And, at the beginning, he is also living with his police squad partner, a pregnant Cuban woman who was thrown out by her parents for having a child out of wedlock (BTW not fathered by Hoke).

A delightful book.

i started slow on this book, but it grew on me in a big way. #3 of Hoke Mosely- in this one Hoke breaks down at work and stops everything - talking, moving - anything. So, he is taken to his father's house at the beach (Riveira). He slowly comes out of it and is said to have a mid-life crises and Hoke takes steps to "simplify his life" - no daughters, no real job, little food, etc. he manages his dad's condo bldg. The other side of the story (Willeford seems to go with the 2 unrelated stories that converge at the end model) is about Stanley Sinkowicz (a retired auto painter left by his wife after a false child molestation charge) who meets Troy Loudoun, a double talking career criminal. Troy devises and supermarket heist with Stanley, his deformed girlfriend and bad artist from Barbados. Suffice it to say, people die and Hoke gets mixed up with the looser gang. Happily Hoke is over his crises and headed back to Miami to take the Detective's exam.

Nobody writes ‘em like Willeford. His third Hoke Mosley thriller captures his one-of-a-kind voice at every turn: The pitch black humor, the lurid depiction of Miami, the male lectures, the careful attention to detail. It’s a book that tells the parallel story of two men who become unmoored from their regular life, and develop coping strategies that are at once carefully considered and glaringly stupid. It’s light on action until the very end, where it becomes a fairly straightforward, gritty police procedural. It doesn’t walk the same high wire between realism and parody that the first two books do, but it’s still wonderfully entertaining. And what a great last line!

This was my first Charles Willeford novel and I really enjoyed his writing style which reminded me of Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard and Joe R. Lansdale.

The story focuses on a detective having a mid-life crisis and taking a leave of absence to go and live with his father on a tranquil Florida island to de-stress. There is a parallel tale of an elderly gentleman who is innocently locked up with a convicted felon and they strike up an unlikely friendship which ends up with the felon taking him on his next heist, which doesn't quite go according to plan.

These seemingly unrelated stories are brilliantly brought together in a violent, climatic couple of chapters at the end of the novel. Mr Willeford turns the formulaic crime novel on its head by putting the crime at the end of the book and using the first three quarters to develop the characters and go into minutiae detail about their lives, such as how the detective cheats at monopoly and how he likes to make beef stew!

This is quirky, zany, off-beat crime fiction at its best with engaging characters and an absurd story but which I really enjoyed. I'm looking forward to reading other books by this talented author.

Not the best of the Hoke Mosley novels, and you'll probably be lost if you begin here because the plots are somewhat serial. I'd recommend Miami Blues.

This was the third book in the series and was another interesting but different read. Not a strong 5 but I am enjoying the series.

Hoke continues to have personal issues and is not able to simplify his life.
I liked the way Willeford brought this story together.

Imagine this: adding Grape-Nuts to a sieve so you can run hot water to soften them up so you can eat them without putting in your false teeth; then gumming them at the dining room table while reading the sports section. Hoke, a homicide investigator lives with his partner Ellita who has the unbearable habit of letting the egg yolks run through her teeth. Ellita, who is pregnant, helps with the rent and the care of Hoke two teenage daughters.

Shades of Ed McBain, the writing, I mean. Hoke gets fed up with trying to solve an interminable number of cold cases that seem to be forever piling up on his desk. He retreats into a catatonic state, finally decides to chuck it all, and leaves for his father's place on Riviera Beach. He has decided he wants the simple life. Right. We all know there is no such thing, and soon his bulimic daughter (recognized as such only by a neighbor) comes to visit (she gets shipped off to his ex,) he's having to deal with the myriad problems as manager of his father's apartment building (he gets free rent in one of the apartments) and Ellita calls for help in dealing with her mother's thoughts on amniocentisis.

A side plot (never fear, the two will intersect) involves a retired Ford employee falsely accused of molesting his neighbor's daughter, a problem that's soon rectified but not before Stanley meets Troy in jail who has a scheme to make lots of money, also involving a painter and a former stripper whose face was mutilated by her boss.

Enough of the plot. You can find that elsewhere. Hoke soon realizes that the simple life is effervescent.

First rate story and writing by a master. Mislabeled as a thriller, though, unless impending disaster provides you with the sense of thrill. An engrossing, very enjoyable story. If you like McBain, Moseley, Leonard, et al, you'll very much like Williford.

This is the third of Willeford's Hoke Moseley books I've read and my favorite so far. At every turn, this book subverted my expectations, and I'm so glad it did. For most of the book, Hoke is shutting himself away from the world as he suffers burnout. But while he does that, the world outside his bubble continues as it always does with a criminal sociopath collecting an odd "family" around himself to pull off a simole crime tgat has horrifying results. Family is the main theme here, with the book contrasting the families around both the criminal and Hoke. Willeford drives the plot forward relentlessly, but leaves room for oddly touching moments of character development from both families. By the end of the book, Hoke is back on the job, but he's not the same character he was at the beginning.

There's one more book featuring Hoke, and I'm looking forward to reading it, but I'll also be sad that his story is over.

I really liked how Willeford pulled the book together at the end. Lots of really kooky characters doing kooky stuff. I won't go into detail, just know that you will be entertained. Waiting on the final chapter of this series. Read it, you won't be disappointed.

A weridly great book, best of the Moseley series (so far, I've got one to go). Willeford has such a curious way of describing the detailed non-events of Moseley's life in a way that, while not fascinating, exactly, nevertheless compel one to keep reading. It's like he has a way of writing about what seems like nothing at all that includes an implicit promise of something exciting on the way.

This book is two stories in alternating chapters, one with Moseley giving up detective work do attempt doing absolutely nothing with his life, which he finds isn't as easy as he hoped, the other about an oldish retiree who meets a criminal with big plans. That half of the story is classic hilarious Willeford. Reminded me of the delusional protagonists of The Burnt Orange Heresy and The Woman Chaser.

So one waits for these two stories to intersect, and they do, to great effect. This isn't really a crime novel in any normal sense, and it isn't really noir. It's just... Willeford.