Four pals are driven out of Miami for differing nefarious reasons. So many surprises. I was not prepared for the abrupt criminality. I was also not prepared for the exhaustive descriptions of the characters and circumstances. I always figured that great writers must have superhuman powers of observation. Willeford proves it here with this feat of writing.

The book from which Tarantino lifted Vincent Vegas gun accidentally going off on Marvin scene.

i love Willeford, and think he's one of the great unsung crime novelists out there. but this one was way too full of misogyny and casual bigotry for me. i know his work is a product of his time period, but this one was just not good.

skip this one. try The Black Mass of Brother Springer or any of the Hoke Moseley series instead.

Cinico.

Tarantino meets Seinfeld. More a character piece than anything, this is the tale of four kibbitizing bachelor buddies in the swinging seventies who seem to find trouble, through no real fault of their own. Hardly tragic or dark, but shocking in how the mundane can instantly turn for the worse, even deadly, from a bad decision or just plain bad luck. Willeford deftly captures both the camaraderie of the relationships as well as the stresses and strains placed on them by the hairy circumstances they find themselves in, all while striking a casual and often amusing tone. It's an odd balance, but one Willeford has been able to pull off again and again.

Four self-absorbed, womanizing, borderline sociopathic bachelors inhabit this novel. There's raunchy sexual content, burst of violence and sprinkles of racism. Set in the Miami of the 1970's which makes some details seem dated. Best enjoyed by middle-aged men and I get the sense that women will not find this novel cute, endearing or funny.

An oddly structured novel, with lots of descriptive filler as though the author just wanted to hit a word count; then again lots of authors seem to do that--which bugs me.

Didn't love it, didn't hate it. I really like the author but I think this is one of his weakest.

I liked this book but I didn't love it. A bunch of uber-macho single guys all kick back with BBQ and brewskis at the same swinging singles apartment building in Florida. One's an airline pilot, one sells real estate, another's a surgeon, etc. whatever.
We get to experience their trials and tribulations with evil hippie White Trash drug dealers who don't know how to treat a dame the way they only know how, with their polyester jumpsuits, feathered hair, and vinyl cowboy boots.
Half the time I wanted to laugh and the other half I just wanted it to be over. A good book shouldn't do that!

Reads like a 50's pulp novel. Good enough to raise hopes, but not enough to fulfill them.

It's Charles Willeford, so you know you're in for better than average writing. I'm just catching up with the old crime masters work and it's interesting holding up one work to another for comparison. I was born in late 70s and grew up in the 80s. This novel felt particularly dated to that time, which in retrospect is a frank, brutal work caught between too eras of exreme moral conservatism -- the former in terms of religious, nuclear family and the later still developing left wing, Millennial version of it. In a way, reading this story was breathtaking and exciting to someone who longs for free speech without political threat of being cancelled. The characters reminded me of what it might be like if Threes Company were an HBO series where we see Jack Tripper and Larry double date some "stews" at the Regal Beagle.

Bonus points for being the kind of unapologetic book for men that truly doesn't exist now due to the demographic for book buyers. Women have many authors cater to them, but not so much men, apart from the occasional Fight Club.

The problem is these men didn't interest me. Their individual desires didn't add up to a more interesting whole. But as a snapshot of it's time, for the curious, I'm glad I gave it a look.

the greatest american novel of the last 50 years? well ... certainly one of the most rabidly depressing and a real curveball from one of my fave writers ... i always thought there was a mainline from lermontov to willeford ....

It started out so good. Like Three's Company with a dark twist. Then it turned into something else and quickly got boring. Several chapters dragged on without any pay-off. Had the first part of the book been developed further, it would have been an easy 5-stars.

"The Shark-Infested Custard" was an interesting read with its multiple narrator perspective. I expected Willeford to concentrate on the National Security guy Larry because he is the professional with a gun, and most noirs have a formulaic protagonist. Instead, he defied my expectations and gave lion's share of the narrative to Hank the drug salesman. The episode involving Hank Norton, the notorious hairy armpits dame Jannaire, and Mr. Wright refreshed my waning interest after the quartet of guys dealt with the 14-year old girl from a drive-in theater and Mr. Yellow Jump Suit, and disposed of their corpses. After one character freaked out and shot Mr. Yellow Jump, I wondered if the novel weren't going to degenerate into an exercise in paranoia with each of the foursome wondering who would buckle under the pressure and inform first on the others. Mind you, in Part I, Willeford wrote: "In Florida, the guilty party who spills everything to the State Attorney gets to first gets immunity . . ." Instead after this episode, Willeford shifts everything to Hank. This initial incident ultimately is used to foreshadow the ending, but I won't divulge anymore than I must. By the way, this is the first novel I have read that contained a character afflicted with 'vitiligo,' something that I've seen, but never knew the word for it. The character of Mr. Wright reminded me of a killer in the Hemingway short-story "The Killers," about a killer who willingly accepts death without fanfare.

The conversation about Electro-Dating between Larry and Hank was entertaining when you consider the psychology involved in it. The idea that people lie when they answer questions for a dating service was interesting. Perhaps that is why I never had any luck. These four guys know each other about as well as tight-knit friends would know each other, and they are living in a singles only apartment high rise in Miami when the narrative unfolds. They make a bet with Hank on the worst place that he could go to pick up a woman. This is how they stumbled onto the 14-year old girl and later Mr. Yellow Jump Suit. This escapade doesn't come back to haunt them. Larry handles the disposal of the corpses, and then Hank takes over and we learn about the difficulties of being close friends the way these guys are. Hank doesn't want to confess certain things to his friends when it concerns his image of a stud. He tangles with the aforementioned Jannaire and he discovers a secret that surprises him. Later, we learn more about Don and Eddie. Out of the four, the weakest link is Don. He is married but separated from his wife. Don has a daughter that he adores, and eventually he tries to patch up his marriage so he can spend more time with his daughter. Unfortunately, things don't work out.

Altogether, "The Shark Infested Custard" is an above-average novel, but it is uneven at times and the outcome is rather unsavory despite the way that the guys treat their last predicament. Reportedly, Willeford felt this was his best book. I didn't like it as much as his Hoke Mosley detective yarns, but the prose and the dialogue are sharp. When I picked it up, I didn't realize at the time that this was his last novel that originally had been split into two stories.