I love this series. The writing is terrific, funny and occasionally shocking in a crass way. I must have laughed out loud ten times and the audiobook is excellent.

Not even an outlaw like Charles Willeford is immune to falling into the series trap. It's very clear that he's trying to recapture the magic of MIAMI BLUES with the cross-cutting perspective chapters. But Stanley, who is something of a fish-out-of-water type, is nowhere nearly as interesting as Freddy Freneger. The novel does have some punch and life in it with Mosley trying to reconcile living with his two daughters and his pregnant partner. But on the whole, this entry lacks the bite and acuity of previous offerings, the very reasons we read Willeford.

hard to say whether these books are great because the criminals are so odd/tenderly sketched, or because hoke the nominal hero is such a dirtbag, or because you recognize yourself in both. doesn't actually matter. this particular moment in american history feels like a bad wedgie so it's been a joy to disappear into these for a few hours a day

Giro di vita

Il Noir riempie le pagine e la vita di molti autori, anche quando credono di scrivere altro, perché è un'atmosfera, un mood.
Come il Blues. Due colori.

Willeford ci gira intorno a modo suo, in maniera molto personale e con l'indolenza di chi, al pari del suo sergente Hoke Moseley, non ha nulla da dimostrare. Non gli interessa.
In particolare qui, nel terzo capitolo della saga di Miami, imbastisce una storia dividendola in due dando il meglio proprio in quella senza il suo Moseley, che nel frattempo è andato fuori di testa e vuole lasciare la Polizia per fare l'amministratore di condominio. Che tipo.

Così, mentre il suo protagonista vive questo cambiamento, Willeford imbastisce una trama parallela partendo da un fatto che oserei dire comico se non fosse serio come quello dell'abuso di minori, e ci presenta il pensionato Stanley, il 'pittore' James, la sfigurata Dale, e soprattutto Troy, uno psicopatico con tendenze criminali che merita il posto d'onore, una personalità spiccata, seducente e pericolosa.

Quando le trame si uniscono, il Noir richiama Willeford tra le sue braccia e scatena le forze in poche efficaci pagine, come quei temporali brevi ma intensi che mica me l'aspettavo.
Poi torna la quiete, e il respiro.

Per il modo di incedere con cui è stato concepito, il romanzo può apparire lento, o addirittura noioso. Mica vero.

Willeford ha avuto una carriera militare ventennale e:
“Una buona metà degli uomini che si incontrano sotto le armi sono psicopatici. Esistono molti punti in comune fra la popolazione carcerarie e quella militare. È così che ho conosciuto tanti uomini come Troy”

Nice n squalid

Due storie che viaggiano parallele fino all’inevitabile ma necessario scontro.
Due storie che non potrebbero più diverse: una crisi di mezza età di un poliziotto che dice basta e se ne va a gestire un motel fuori città e un anziano finito in galera per sbaglio, raggirato da un figlio di puttana cazzutissimo che se ne va in giro con una spogliarellista sfigurata.
Un epilogo inaspettato, devastante come i colpi della doppietta usata per fare il famoso “colpo che ti mette a posto tutta la vita” ma che ogni volta si trasforma in uno spettacolo circense che si conclude in tragedia.
Charles Willeford che ancora una volta tesse, con le sue storie e i suoi dialoghi, una ragnatela perfetta che ti intrappola nel libro e non ti lascia andare fino alle battute finali.

Alan Sepinwall, my favorite TV critic, has a running gag in his columns where he talks about how he’d like to see a character from whatever show he’s reviewing have a spin-off where they do banal tasks relational to the character’s motives. My personal favorite was the suggestion that goofy Justified gangster Wynn Duffy get a series called Wynnipeg in which he gets continually frustrated at teaching Canadians how to be criminals.

At any rate, three books into the Hoke Moseley series and I feel like this one, as well as its immediate prequel, are basically a Sepinwall spinoff series come to life.

Miami Blues, the first one in the series, was one of my favorite novels I read in 2018. A raucous, hilarious crime thriller, pitting cop and criminal in the worst game of cat-and-mouse ever. As I had already read, and loved other Willeford works (Cockfighter was my favorite crime read of 2017), I fast tracked the Hoke Moseley on my ever expanding TBR list.

Sadly, the second one New Hope for the Dead did not meet expectations. There were funny gags and Willeford is great at writing characters and creating a lived in Miami, even if its cynically presented. Most of the novel was about Hoke dealing with family issues and solving a rash of uninteresting crimes on the side.

When this one began with Hoke being sidelined from his family, I liked where it was going but sadly, it soon circles back into family stuff, with a parallel story of the criminals getting ready to commit The Big Crime. When the two finally intersect near the end, it’s great. The last forty pages are wonderful. But for the most part, Sideswipe is a remix of New Hope with a better ending.

Instead of getting “Hoke Moseley, curmudgeonly Miami detective”, I’m getting the spinoff series where said detective helps people do mundane stuff in their daily lives. Willeford’s such a great writer that I find myself enjoying this nonetheless. But it doesn’t make for a great story, definitely not a great crime read at least. And that’s fine. It’s just a little disappointing.

The best of the first three Hoke Moseley books. Great stuff.

I enjoy Willford's writing style, lean, mean and never out of steam. His handling of his female characters is dated, even by the 80's standards. Maybe that was intentional.

Quite the banger of an ending to the book.

En udda deckare med karaktärer som sticker ut.

Detta är tredje boken i en serie och jag har inte läst de andra. Det var därför en speciell öppning när boken började med att huvudpersonen som är polis går in i väggen och bestämmer sig för att sluta och göra allt för att förenkla sitt liv. Den historien och parallell historierna är behållningen snarare än krimalberättelsen.

One of four Hoke Mosely novels, Elmore Leonard wrote of Willeford: "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford." I'd add, no one writes so genre-bending. Read the generic review to get the set up for this tale. And just know, that Willeford cuts back and forth between the story of Troy Louden's seduction of a simple retiree into a supermarket burglery scheme with Hoke Moseley's midlife crisis and the family dynamics of the Moseley family.

Willeford centers character in his tales, while writing from an almost deadpan neutrality seemingly avoiding any sense of emotionality. And in this one, the crime doesn't happen till page 235 of a 279 page novel. It's almost as if the crime were tangential to the story Willeford is really wanting to tell. And when he gets to the crime, his clinical tone of narrative doesn't change while detailing the absolute carnage that if filmed would most resemble of Quentin Terantino film! That doesn't mean this novel is any the less engrossing! I devoured it over the course or two days while being very busy visiting family in NYC!

following the botched supermarket heist things get real anticlimactic real fast, but willbro's command of what i would classify as "sad bachelor stuff" (games of solitaire; adding extra onions to canned stew; shooting the breeze with the downstairs neighbor about horseflies; having strong opinions about the best & worst stouffers frozen entrees) remains unrivaled. gotta love as well the perversity of a crime novel where the detective makes just wildly wrong deductions (lol @ concluding that stanley's spent his life in prison). on to moseley #4!