Fricken Rad

Noioso, poco originale e complessivamente sgradevole.

The man can write. I can see Charles Willeford being a writer's writer. His descriptions are solid and his dialogue reminiscent of Elmore Leonard and James Elroy. The novel is short and you will devour it quickly - I could see a TV series featuring the detectives if it were written more recently. I shall seek more of his books but they are 80's in origin and only to be had second hand I fear.

I first read Miami Blues sometime in the eighties - before the 1990 movie - but rereading it now thirty years later, it's hard to read it without picturing the characters as portrayed in the movie. That there is the power of cinema. It's still an awesome book even rereading it and knowing full well what's going to happen. It is strikingly different in tone and affect from Willeford's earlier pulp works so much so that you wonder how that could be.

What's really remarkable about Miami Blues and its sequels (and no I haven't read the secret unpublished manuscript of the original dark nasty sequel) is how could Willeford really became at storytelling. Each page and even each paragraph tells a whole story. There are oddities that he throws in seemingly effortlessly like the Hare Krishna dying of a broken finger or the casual mentions of incest.

And then there are these amazing characters like the dimwitted prostitute who wakes up each day as wide-eyed and innocent as the day she was born. Or the psychopathic killer who decides to become her platonic husband. Or the homicide detective who is forever losing his chompers (dentures) and lives in a fleabag hotel because he sends every other paycheck for alimony.

The actual plot plays second fiddle to all these classic scenes like the ex-con and the cop having dinner together or Junior going to "work" at the mall. Some of what takes place is the gallows humor of the police station but it's so funny you almost forget the one-man crime wave Junior is.

An absolutely breathtaking work.