There is a good reason why the forward to this edition is written by Elmore Leonard, because fans of his work have probably never heard of Charles Willeford, and they should devour all his novels. This is the 3rd Hoke Moseley book, and is in similar fashion to the others - skewed perspectives, dopey fringe characters, humorous descriptions, and sudden bursts of violence. While this is filed under Mystery, there is little mystery to the plot - the plot lines develop separately, then violently collide, sputtering off into unexpected directions. If you are a fan of noir or simply good gumshoe writing, this series is something else.

The words 'quirky' and 'offbeat' come to mind for this, the third Hoke Moseley novel. I've read them out of order (2, then 1, then 3) but there's a clear decline in quality I'm afraid. Or, at least, a noticeable decline in narrative tension and shape. The story takes a good couple of chapters to get going, and then it moves forward in fits and starts. The writing isn't memorable, and yet there's definitely something endearing about these characters, which I guess explains the popularity of this series. Onto the fourth and final volume, then.

Writer friends I trust kept telling me to read Willeford—so when I finally did, picking up the third in the Hoke Moseley series, I at first wondered what the hell they were talking about. This book, and more notably, the character was going nowhere and not much was happening. Actually, nothing was happening. This book was a 2-star at most, and I thought about bailing. But I didn’t. And I don’t know why.

For sure the writing was top notch, sharp, clean, all the things I like. But when the so-called detective falls into a catatonic stupor, and the twinned storyline about some goofy senior citizen with marital problems seems to be going nowhere, I questioned what these other writers were talking about. When detective Hoke does come out of the trance, brought on by too much work, he decides to run an apartment building for his father, and to somehow simplify his life. Along the way we get to know about his daughters, one with an eating disorder, his ex-wife who is now married to a professional baseball player, his pregnant partner, and seemingly a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really matter. There is a long exchange with a tenant who studies Ethiopian horseflies, I kid you not.

The other mentioned storyline is just as meandering. Stanley Sinkiewicz the retired auto factory worker gets tossed in jail after a bogus charge, where he meets Troy Louden. There is some intrigue as we began to understand Troy is not playing with a full deck, or the cards he has are potentially really violent–that forced metaphor makes as much sense as the rest of the book. Later we meet a non-objective painter from the Bahamas, and a stripper with a horrific facial injury. Are you still with me?

The weirdest thing happened, though—with the slowest of burns, the tension grows, so much so I had to put the book down and take a break. I knew something bad was going to happen and it was going to be explosive. But holy crap, Willeford trusted his readers to stay with him a long time before things broke loose… or else he didn’t care. For the first several hundred pages, there really is no crime in this book. But for the last twenty-five, not only could I not put it down, the realization that all that came before mattered. And wow, does it explode.

This book cast a strange spell on me, and made me see crime fiction in a whole new light. The two-star book became a five, or if possible a six-star read. It's a novel that broke the rules and changed the game. Sadly, I doubt Sideswipe would get published in today’s market. It asks a lot of the reader... mainly patience. But if you stick with it, the resonance of this novel, and Hoke Moseley, will stay with you a very long time.
I am off to read everything Willeford has written.

It isn't often that you pick up a novel because of a reference in another book. So as I read Val Macdermid's 'Fever in the bone' there is a scene in which her hero is browsing his deceased fathers book shelves and sees books by Charles willeford. Intrigued I picked this up in the library and really enjoyed the story and character of Hoke Moseley a tired Miami detective who has a mild breakdown and moves back to his fathers home on sick leave to caretake his dads condo buliding. Running parrallel to Hoke's tale is the build up to a brutal robbery involving an intiguing bunch of characters all of whom are so brilliantly drawn that it feels like you are watching a film, in fact the writer is excellent at the physical description of his players and the dialogue is cinematic moving with pace. The book mixes humour with threat and I loved this classically hard boiled read. It is book 3 in a series so I will dedfinitely look out for the rest of the series.

Un detective della Squadra Omicidi di Miami esaurito che cerca di riciclarsi come amministratore di condominio, un pensionato che vuole ridare un po' di smalto alla propria insulsa vita, un criminale psicopatico e i suoi improbabili complici che tentano il colpo della vita. Abbiamo visto questo copione (anni dopo) nei migliori film di Tarantino. Qui lo si legge con grande gusto, soprattutto per il personaggio di Hoke Moseley, in perfetto stile hard boiled con le sue tute in popeline, lupo che perde il pelo ma non il vizio di fiutare il crimine anche sotto lo spesso strato di benessere di Miami Beach. Gustosissimo l'affresco della società WASP di pensionati che hanno scelto le lottizzazioni costiere della Florida come ultimo, noiosissimo rifugio.

Hey, I'm not crazy on detective series, or any series for that matter, especially trilogies. Yawn. With a few exceptions I'd rather avoid them. But this...this... is different. Hoke Moseley is one of the best characters ever created in fiction, by anybody. Many of Willeford's characters are.
The guy was a hecking genius, no mistake.

This one features Moseley nearing the end of his career, burnt out and fed up, planning on bailing out of the Miami PD. to kick things off, he has a kind of fugue and decides to not go back to work. From here, it's a 'gators crawl with Willeford exploring Hoke's options. Sure, it's slow, but it's never, ever boring. In fact, it might be slow, but it's also pacey. Meanwhile Stanley "Pop" Sinkiewincz, who may or may not be the same Stanley Sinkiewincz in 1953's The High Priest of California, winds up in gaol for a crime he didn't commit, his wife leaves him he and hooks up with charming psychopath Troy Louden, a disfigured hooker and a talent-less artist from the Caribbean and these chapters are really something.

Eventually the two alternating stories link up but it's not how they link up that's interesting -- you assume the linking is a given -- it's the ending. The climax, which is the actual crime that makes this a 'crime novel' is so shockingly violent that it's kind of unexpected, though I should have expected it.

But it's not the action, it's the minutiae of the characters lives, the microscopic dissection, the top draw dialogue and quirkiness that makes Sideswipe, and Willeford himself, stand tall.

"No job's any safer than Homicide, Moseley. When you report to the scene, the victim's already dead, and the killer's long gone. Or he's still there, crying and saying he didn't mean to do it."

Hoke Moseley is fed up with solving cold case crimes, raising two teenage daughters, and cohabitating with his pregnant police partner. One morning he stops talking altogether, moves back in with his father, decides to quit the force, and vows to never set foot off Singer Island again…

On the opposite end of Riviera Beach, septuagenarian Pop Sinkiewicz is having the worst day of his life. He is arrested for molesting a nine-year old, he gets assaulted by the girl's father, his wife leaves him, then the police lock him in a holding cell with a psychopath named Troy Louden. Pop is innocent of the crime, but he is soon swept up anyway in Troy's murderous schemes and get-rich plans…

The lives of these three men should have never crossed, but now they are on a collision course that can only end in violence and bloodshed…

After a disappointing sophomore outing, Hoke Moseley returns in his third novel that is just as good as--maybe even better than--Miami Blues. The story alternates between Hoke's and Pop's points of view. It is full of dark comedy, hardboiled violence, and offbeat quirky characters.

It is interesting to note the Pop Sinkiewicz sections were originally written to be a standalone novel. That novel was published as No Experience Necessary in 1962, but the author Charles Willeford was upset after the editor rewrote large sections of it without his permission. He was able to incorporate his original version into this novel twenty-five years later, with only minimal rewriting in the last act.

I alternated between the hardcover and the audiobook read by Stephen Bowlby.

4.5 stars. Highly recommended.

Crazy, and fun to read!

Poor fare. Meandered to the main event, which wasn't any great shakes either. Having read other Willefords this is the weakest by a street. Takes away from the Moseley canon considerably.

Weird book. Not sure that it qualifies as a mystery. Not much of a mystery to it. Just two stories that eventually intersect, with the detective in the story being the point of intersection.

I like a story that goes 65 mph in a 55, and this one is pushing 40 in a 55. It’s the minutiae that killed me though. A lot a lot of detail, even in the dialogue, and there was a point to it and a payoff, but I wasn’t in the mood to settle in and pass that kind of time with these characters, not right now.

Loved the movie Miami Blues. After re-watching it, inspired by the passing of Fred Ward, I looked in to it more and from there discovered it was based on a book. I am now finishing up the 4th of the Hoke series and enjoyed them all. As I was reading Sideswipe, I was reminded of another favorite book of mine, Confederacy of Dunces. I can't put my finger on it - whether it is the Troy character or Stanley or the oddity of them together that makes me chuckle a bit like when reading Confederacy of Dunces.