There's good Willeford (Pick-up, Wild Wives, Miami Blues), flabby Willeford (The Burnt-Orange Heresy, Sideswipe) and then there's The Shark-Infested Custard. Apparently the man thought this was his best novel. He was wrong.

It's hard to explain how banal and-frankly-offensive this novel is. It's about four friends in Miami and their various misdeeds, but the whole thing is blatantly sexist and racist in the most demeaning ways. Furthermore, there's no narrative tension whatsoever and the various pieces of this don't hang together very well at all. All four men are similar jerks, and even though there's about three or four murders, you couldn't really call this a crime novel.

Willeford wrote this in the seventies and wasn't able to get it published before his death. After this he went on to write his Hoke Moseley series, which is drastically better than this, but The Shark-Infested Custard stinks to high heaven from beginning to end.

It is great to read a noir novel written in the '70's. I guess I haven't read many books like this that were written in that era for some reason. This is about a group of guys living in a singles apartment building in Miami. One night the most upsetting thing you can imagine happens to them, and the book just gets stranger after that. Willeford writes in a way that makes everything that happens to these guys seem plausible. Here is one of my favorite passages from this book, where one of the characters describes his boss during a meeting with him:
"Madras is back, and Tom was wearing a new madras suit —predominantly yellow, green, and black—with sixteen-inch cuffed bell-bottoms, a salmon-colored shirt, and a black-and-gold tie."

This was fucking sick. Very psychologically rich, as if Dostoyevsky wrote a crime novel. Perfect critique of these kind of guys. Incredible, crackling dialogue which contrasts so nicely with the chillingly flat affect of the prose itself.

This book follows four friends living in Miami. The book is broken up into four parts. The POV changes along with the part, and the plot of each section. Section two, the longest part was published separately as Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

The first two sections are classic Willeford. The action, the language, the almost but not quite absurd nature and direction of the story, all that is here and more. The second half, sections three and four seem to peter out. The book is worth reading for either the first two sections.

4 mates, 4 stories, 4 "Holy Fuck" moments. I'd describe it as Charles Willeford does Raymond Carver.

Quite a shift from his tighter genre-observant Hoke Moseley novels, SHARK reads like some of Willeford's other writing (e.g., BURNT-ORANGE HERESY) that exploreS the lives of outcasts and sociopaths. This novel,a sort of seedy neon Miami extreme of that type, is neither a traditional noir nor a play on the conventions of noir, but it's a compelling read anyway. The novel feels fragmentary--or a bit unfinished--and I have wondered about the circumstances of its publication. I found it a good, if idiosyncratic and nasty, piece of work.

Willeford's writing feels kinda tired in this one, four stories about four friends living in Miami. The second and third stories have a nice, loose, hard-boiled feel that Willeford's best books have, but the first and fourth stories are pretty lousy.

This is the first of Willeford's books I have read. I was interested to read him as I had heard of his popularity and skill in the 'crime noir' style of writing. But this particular book was a walk back in time! Granted, it is well written, but it is very dated! The last 50 or so pages were the most readable and provided a better example of the humour he was reputed to have, but the blatant sexism, racism and 'boys behaving badly' is so over-the-top as to be an excellent summation of the more repugnant of male behaviours that we women of that era are so glad to have left behind. Ladies, beware!

The Shark Infested Custard is told in four parts, each part told in the first person from the perspective of one of the four lead characters. Willeford manages to produce four different voices and to provide a nice depth of characterization. The dialogue is spot-on, and the scenes are well penned, some of them very well so. There are some very nice observational touches throughout, especially Hank’s amateur psychology readings of other people, although this is tempered by some fairly explicit sexism and some political incorrectness around race. For me, it was the plot that was the weakest element of the book. Each part is an extended short story, with each intersecting with the others. In some places, the story didn’t really seem to be moving anywhere other than building the character. There just seemed to be little forward momentum and if I’d lost the book, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to buy another to find out how the book ended. And collectively the four parts didn’t seem to be adding up to more than the sum of the parts. That is, until the last few pages. Often novels seem to tail off at the end, whereas this one finished with a flurry that had the effect of lifting the whole book. Indeed, it is interesting that a day or so after finishing it, my opinion of its merits is much higher than when I was actually reading it. Overall, an uneven story that has some flashes of brilliance.

The four stories about four Miami, Florida, friends could have been 400. I would have followed them anywhere. Where they took me was immoral, unethical, but never unpleasant. They're such good company for a group of psychopaths. Not that they seemed like madmen: all were hardworking professionals (though they weren't really), all were decent members of society (though they weren't really) and were fun-loving loyal friends (those they weren't really). The writing is rich in detail, those details of a Day-Glo past that would be overdose-inducing if rendered visually, and flat of affect, which pulled me willingly along for the ride even when it turned down dark corners. There's humor. There're mini-essays on underarm hair on women and diet and why Miami is paradise on early (though it isn't really), which makes each page dense with intelligence and entertainment. Charles Willeford is this the first time I've read you? It won't be the last!

It’s clear from multiple comments in this book and over the course of the Hoke Moseley series that Willeford really really hates affirmative action. It’s pretty gross and I got tired of it so DNF.

If you want to read a detailed glimpse into masculinity circa 1972 then do I have the book for you! I think if you go into it expecting crazy, then you won't be so freaked out by the rampant misogyny, casual racist and homophobic comments, and general "What on Earth!?" behaviors. An added bonus is all the incredibly dated early 70's references that I guess read as fresh and modern and edgy 50 years ago.

13 year old drug addicted girl in hot pants - check! Visit to porno theater - check! A threesome with stewardesses (hey, they weren't flight attendants back then) - check! Visit to a drive in - check! Attempted rape - check! Rape - check! Detailed descriptions of groovy polyester lounge suits and their accompanying accessories - check! A 'fancy dinner' consisting of lobster Newburg and vichyssoise - check! A visit to a Playboy club - check! Sexually harassing waitresses - check! Sexually harassing secretaries - check! Making fun of women who don't shave - check! Making fun of housewives - check! Making fun of successful businesswomen - check! There is more but I am tired of this paragraph.

The 'mystery' itself is no mystery. There literally isn't one. There are a few random murders that peter out and go no where. It really is just a portrayal of the friendship of 4 horrible men who live in a 'swingin' singles' modern apartment complex in Miami. Jaw-droppingly dated.