I loved this book. The quirky characters, the weird situations, the interaction. Junior Frenger, a freeloading sociopath recently released from prison, arrives in Miami, where he uses his skills at deception and violence to twist situations into his advantage.
Weary police detective Hoke Moseley investigates the carnage in Frenger's wake and falls victim himself, which leads to hilarious situations.

Strongly recommended to fans of Elmore Leonard and noir crime novels.

I almost gave up on this in the beginning but it got a little better as it went along. My 3 stars is probably closer to a 2.6 stars. Junior was a very interesting psychopath while Susie didn't add that much. The main disappointment was Hoke who is suppose to be the central character. While it may have been a realistic depiction of an average Miami detective he just wasn't interesting enough or a strong enough character to carry the plot. Junior was obviously the centerpiece but this is suppose to be the first entry in a series about Hoke.

Re-read -- I've been in a reading slump lately and needed something like this. I'd forgotten just how funny Willeford could be. The best way I could describe this is Charles Portis writing hard-boiled fiction. Actually, the best way I could describe this is "great."

This book by Charles Willeford (along with The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins) is the basis of the great crime fiction of Elmore Leonard. He was heavily influenced by these two authors and it shows.

This is not to say that Leonard copied the style – instead he has improved upon the approach to writing that these authors have themselves mastered.

In Miami Blues, the reader spends just as much time with the bad guy as the good guy (maybe even more time..) and he seems like a real person, not just a criminal to be arrested by the police. We spend time with this antagonist, Freddy the psychopathic ex-con, and learn about his motivations, his likes, dislikes, worries, etc. You’ll see the roots of Leonard when you read this book.

The “good guy” cop Hoke a unique denture-wearing guy who is sympathetic yet slightly stand-offish. You don’t learn to love him but you like him as well as feel bad for him. He’s not overly macho and therefore he seems all the more real for that.

Some of the language and references are dated and there some racist/homophobic/sexist language that may turn off some readers. However, that language is put there to show the attitudes of people you’d meet everyday. It’s a frank and honest portrayal of real people.

The plot relies on a far-fetched coincidence but it’s not too distracting. There’s some pretty brutal scenes in here, too, so fans of violent crime fiction will love it.

Even though the roots of Elmore Leonard lie in the fiction of Willeford and Higgins, I think Leonard has improved upon that style, tightening up the writing and making it more laid-back (and more fast-paced, if that makes sense).

There is also some humor in Miami Blues, some of it quite funny (the “Crisco” part is pretty hilarious).

So, if you like good crime fiction that isn’t a “whodunit”, read this book. If you like Elmore Leonard, read this book. And for Tarantino fans, QT has also name-dropped Willeford as an influence so if that gets you excited, read this book.

It's close to being 4 stars but I just can't give it 4.

This was a good book, crime pulp? maybe would be a description. It has a bad guy who seems straight out of Capote's In Cold Blood, a young woman who falls in with him and Sergeant Hoke Moseley who's job it is too bring him down.

Short and quick read, entertaining. I enjoyed it and will eventually read another in the series.

Libro davvero insulso, dall'inizio alla fine. Nient'altro da dire.

I picked this up after reading the review by my GR Friend Cbj, and I wholeheartedly recommend that you read his review. You can find it on the top page of the community reviews section.

I find it hard to define why I like some crime novels and not others, but in my opinion, some suffer from over-elaborate plots or overdone characters. Charles Willeford avoids both those pitfalls in the first of his books featuring Miami detective Hoke Moseley, who isn’t one of life’s winners. A forty-something sergeant who wears dentures, he’s divorced and has some pretty big financial problems, and lives in crappy accommodation. He also spends most of this novel wondering what the heck is going on. There are two other main characters. We are introduced right at the beginning to the villain, Freddy Frenger, who views other people entirely through the lens of what he can get from them. The novel’s perspective switches between those of Moseley and Frenger, whilst the third main character is Freddy’s girlfriend, Susan Waggoner. Modern female readers might get frustrated at Susan, a victim of teenage abuse who is mostly (though not entirely) passive in her relationship with Freddy, and who seems to have limited aspirations. Of course, there are some women who are like that, just as there are many who aren’t.

This is an entertaining and super-easy read, and for me Willeford gets the mood just right. I’ve been looking for a while for a new crime series in the noir or hardboiled category, so thanks Cbj!

Treasure of the Rubbermaids 10: Good Cop - Bad Cop

The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.

Junior Frenger has just gotten out of prison in California, and he promptly heads to Miami with a pocket full of stolen cash and credit cards. No sooner does he arrive at the airport than a Hare Krishna annoys him so Junior breaks his finger before leaving to embark on a one-man crime wave. Freakishly, the Krishna dies from the shock of the broken digit, and homicide detective Hoke Mosley gets the case.

Junior goes on to meet part-time call girl Susan, and then unlikely coincidence brings Hoke into contact with both of them. Hoke doesn’t realize that Junior is the guy who inadvertently killed the Krishna, but he picks up on Junior being an ex-con and starts nosing around him and Susan. This annoys Junior who goes on the offensive and ends up in a position to impersonate a police officer while complicating Hoke’s life.

This is a slick and original crime thriller with off-beat characters. Junior is described as a ‘blithe psychopath‘, and he lives up to that billing. Since he’s sure that he’ll end up in jail eventually no matter what he does, Junior is only interested in instant gratification and fast cash with no real concern about long term consequences. Susan is so grateful to have someone to take care of her that she quickly begins complying with Junior’s instructions.

Hoke isn’t your typical hero cop, either. Just over 40 with a failed marriage and a mouthful of false teeth as well as a taste for bourbon, Hoke‘s personal life is a mess. With every spare dime going towards alimony and child support, he has to live in a shabby hotel and can’t even keep up with his bar tab. Hoke’s also losing most of his friends on the police force as an increasingly dangerous Miami of the late ‘80s is causing most of them to flee to safer jobs.

Anyone looking for an fast paced crime novel with a dark sense of humor would enjoy this book. The movie version from 1990 with Alec Baldwin and Fred Ward is a good adaptation of this also.

Good everything, no theme. A helluva lot of fun. 4-stars.

Check out the movie trailer and review @http://more2read.com/review/miami-blues-hoke-moseley-1-by-charles-willeford/

This story is reminiscent of the novel the killer inside me by Jim Thompson, in that it features an anti-hero Freddy Frenger jr AkA Ramon Mendez a mean psychopath who is a compulsive liar and thief similar to Thompsons creation of Sheriff Lou Ford. You'd love to have these two mean specimens on the same page. The whole story plays out into one brutal and bloody series of events taking place in the sunshine state of Miami.
Freddy teams up with a naive young woman and makes her believe he wants to be married and have a family.
While he tries to play family man he's running around town robbing and killing and she's quite oblivious to this dark side. Time will tell though and she will soon taste the end of his whip and as some dark harrowing truths come to light she have to do some mighty quick intelligent thinking.
You are put through the eyes of Freddy more than the first appearance of homicide detective Hoke Moseley.
Hoke can be brutal when needed but looks to be an interesting detective to read more of in the other novels where Charles Willeford features him as a main protagonist.
The dialogue and writing is sharp, the story cuts to the chase there is some deadpan dark humour in the mix and all these blends of style provides entertaining reading through one dark side of Miami with ex-con Freddy 'Junior.'

"Perhaps Freddy has been too pessimistic about his life. He had figured, for as long as he could remember, that someday he would end up in prison for life, wandering around the yard as an old lag, muttering into a white beard and sniping cigarette butts.
But that didn't have to be - not if he could plan and execute one big job. Just one big haul...
But nothing came to him. He had no concrete ideas except for germ, and the germ was that he had Sergeant Hoke Moseley's badge and ID. The badge was an automatic pass to free food and public transportation; it could also be used to bluff someone out of considerable sum of cash. But who?"

2,5
Not so bad, not so great.

Dry and slow. While the writing is certainly “pulpish”, the story was so boring, I barely finished what should have been a quick dime store summer read.

A minimal story spans nearly 200 pages, with no mystery, no plot twists, no action. Most of the story is about Freddie, a career criminal who just arrived in Miami from prison. He hurts a guy at the airport, meets a hooker at his hotel, commits a few petty burglaries, maybe does some worse things, but they are just checked off the list of what should go into a crime novel. No real plot. And Hoke, the hero cop, is just as bland a character.

Very hard to write a bad crime novel. I’ve read some marginal ones, but this one may have been the worst. Boring, boring, boring.