Charles Willeford's legendary lost novel, unavailable since its original publication in 1961. AN UNFORGIVABLE CRIME. AN UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL. Why would a happily married Florida housewife pick up her husband's .22 caliber Colt Woodsman semi-automatic pistol and use it to kill her two young children and herself? Cynical newspaper reporter Richard Hudson is assigned to find out - and the assignment will send him down a road of self-discovery in this incisive, no-holds-barred portrait of American marriage in the Mad Men era. On the 30th anniversary of the death of the masterful novelist the Atlantic Monthly called the "father of Miami crime fiction," Hard Case Crime is proud to present Charles Willeford's legendary lost novel, unavailable since its original publication by a disreputable paperback house in 1961. One of Willeford's rarest titles (copies of the original edition sell for hundreds of dollars), Understudy for Death still has the power to disturb, half a century after its debut.
Jake Blake is a private detective short on cash when he meets a rich and beautiful young woman looking to escape her father’s smothering influence. Unfortunately for Jake, the smothering influence includes two thugs hired to protect her—and the woman is in fact not the daughter of the man she wants to escape, but his wife. Now Jake has two angry thugs and one jealous husband on his case. As Jake becomes more deeply involved with this glamorous and possibly crazy woman, he becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue—and multiple murders. Brilliant, sardonic, and full of surprises, Wild Wives is one wild ride.
When Miami Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering he has his former partner, who happens to be nursing a newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn't like the situation on bit. It doesn't help matters when he is suddenly assigned to work undercover, miles away, outside of his jurisdiction and without his badge, his gun, or his teeth. Soon, he is impersonating a drifter and tring to infiltrate a farm operation suspected of murdering migrant workers. But when he gets there for his job interview, the last thing he is offered is work. In this final installment of the highly acclaimed Hoke Moseley novels, Charles Willeford's brilliance and expertise show on every page. Equally funny, thrilling, and disturbing, The Way We Die Now is a triumphant finish to one of the most original detective series of all time.
A collection of three stories by one of America's best crime writers. 'The Pope of psycho-pulp' - Time Out 'No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford' - Elmore Leonard
After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp. Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time.
Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh Miami neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring stepmother of the decedant, and begins to wonder about dating a witness. Meanwile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new chief unless he leaves his beloved, if squalid, suite at the El Dorado Hotel, and moves downtown. With free housing hard to come by, Hoke is desperate to find a new place to live. His difficulties are only amplified by an assignment to re-investigate fifty unsolved murders, the unexpected arrival of his two teenage daughters, and a partner struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. With few options and even fewer dollars, he decides that the suspicious and beautiful stepmother of the dead junkie might be a compromised solution to all of his problems. Packed with atmosphere and humor, New Hope for the Dead is a classic murder mystery by one of the true masters of the genre. Now back in print, Charles Willeford’s tour de force is an irresistible invitation to become acquainted with one of the greatest detective characters of all time.
High Priest of California, first published in 1953, is a gritty noir thriller by Charles Willeford. The book, Willeford’s first novel, centers on San Francisco used-car salesman Russell Haxby, a highly unpleasant character, who, motivated perhaps by sheer boredom, engages in small time cons and seduces a married woman. Willeford (1919-1988) is best known for his books featuring hardboiled detective Hoke Moseley. A roaring saga of the male animal on the prowl—The world was his oyster—and women his pearls!
A driven art critic’s plan to steal a painting leads to murder in this classic neo-noir novel by the author of the Hoke Moseley series. Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything—blackmail, burglary, and beyond—to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living—and most reclusive—artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality’s limits to a bigger payoff? Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con. Now a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Mick Jagger Praise for The Burnt Orange Heresy “Stunning . . . A novel full of genuine fun that also manages to make a level statement about the art world and its hermetic credulities.” —New Yorker
Hoke Moseley has had enough. Tired of struggling against alimony payments, two teenage daughters, a very pregnant, very single partner, and a low paying job as a Miami homicide detective, Hoke moves to Singer Island and vows never step foot on the mainland again. But on the street, career criminal Troy Louden is hatching plans of his own with a gang including a disfigured hooker, a talentless artist, and a clueless retiree. But when his simple robbery results in ruthless and indiscriminate bloodshed, Hoke quickly remembers why he is a cop and hurls himself back into the world he meant to leave behind forever. A masterly tale of both mid-life crisis and murder, Sideswipe is a page-turning thriller packed with laughs, loaded with suspense, and featuring one of the truly original detectives of all time.
Die Protagonisten dieses Buches sind Antihelden: Abzocker, Verlierer, Serienmörder oder Auftragskiller. Das ist in der Welt der Crime- und Pulpfiction nichts Ungewöhnliches, ist doch die Figur des Antiheros ein beliebtes Stilmittel, um einen Blick in die Schattenbereiche der Zivilisation zu riskieren. Je mehr die Antiheros von Dekade zu Dekade mutierten, desto bizarrer und gewagter wurden die Storys. Das Kernstück dieser Anthologie ist Charles Willefords Debütroman "Der Hohepriester": Im San Francisco der 50-er inszeniert der selbstgefällige Gebrauchtwagenhändler Russel seine Interpretation des American-Way-of-Life und manipuliert seine Mitmenschen gnadenlos. Paul Cain, Fletcher Flora, Dan J. Marlowe, Derek Raymond, Joe R. Lansdale und Buddy Giovinazzo lassen weitere Vertreter der Spezies Antihero auf uns los...
Hoke Moseley is the star of the modern South Florida crime novel, birthed by Charles Willeford, whose forebear is John D. MacDonald and who, in his turn, has inspired Carl Hiaasen and Quentin Tarantino. Through Moseley we are witness to a Miami in transition, from lush retirement haven to capital of 1980s glamour, drugs and weird crime. Willeford's four Miami novels present a hero rather the worse for wear. Hoke sucks at life; in his mid-forties, with false teeth and an aching body, a bad divorce has left him with the cheap work and the care of two teenage daughters. His offbeat humour, brilliant writing and quirky sense of fashion have assured Charles Willeford a permanent place alongside the greats of modern crime fiction.
In post-World War II Los Angeles, a disillusioned used car salesman seeks revenge after his attempt to make the great American film fails miserably. Richard Hudson, woman chaser and used car salesman, has a pimp’s awareness of the ways women (and men) are most vulnerable. One day Richard decides to make an ambitious film, which turns into a fiasco. Enraged, he exacts revenge on all who have crossed him. Praise for The Woman Chaser “A pitilessly hilarious dissection of the American male psyche.” —Chicago Tribune “The most eloquently brainy and exacting pulp-fiction ever fabricated!”—Village Voice
This underground classic of hard-boiled noir fiction follows two addiction-addled drifters as they struggle to make ends meet in the streets of 1950s California First published as an unheralded paperback original, Pick-Up is an authentic underground classic, an explosive bulletin from the urban underbelly of mid-1950s America. It was Charles Willeford’s second novel, after a rough and wandering earlier life that had taken him from Depression-era hobo camps and soup kitchens to wartime battlefields. The unblinking story of two lost and self-destructive drifters—a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence—trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco, Pick-Up is hardboiled writing at its nihilistic best: Willeford’s preferred title for the book was Until I Am Dead. Its bleak vision of life beyond the edge is haunted by rape, racism, alcoholism, suicide, and inescapable poverty, yet shot through with a tenderness and compassion sustained against all odds in a society offering few breaks to its outcasts and misfits. Pick-Up’s many twists and violent turns culminate in an ending that continues to surprise, confirming it as what critic Woody Haut has called “a razor-sharp narrative that rips open the genre.”
From the master of Miami noir comes this tale of four regular guys living in a singles apartment building who experience firsthand that there's more than one type of heat in Miami. Larry Dolman is a rather literal minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings—and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.
In this new collection of short stories, vignettes and autobiographical sketches-many previously unpublished-Charles Willeford, author of Miami Blues and The Burnt Orange Heresy creates a mosaic of the absurdities of life in the 20th century. From a malicious grandmother to prophetic depictions of the power of reality television, with his wry humor and sudden shifts to violence, Willeford seduces, amuses and repeatedly surprises you. This expanded hardcover edition adds Willeford's complete published poetry, as well as nearly 50 previously unpublished poems. "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford" -Elmore Leonard
I had a hunch that madness was a predominant theme and normal condition for Americans living in the second half of this century' Charles Willeford Willeford's pulp classic features six incisive tales as fresh as the day they were first published in 1963. Writing at a time when we still had some faith in our elected leaders, Willeford laid bare the American Dream - and 50 years later his revelations are as chilling and relevant as ever.
Two titles together in one book- Wild Wives and High Priest of California! A seedy glimpse into 50s San Francisco by an unsung master of the lowdown, Charles Willeford. Used car salesmen, two-bit detectives, and psychotic dames clash against one another in the city by the Bay. Pure Pulped CLASSIX is a garishly named effort on the part of Resurrectionary Press to provide works of pulp fiction in cleanly designed and properly typset editions.
A classic of Hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford's Wild Wives is amoral, sexy and brutal. Written in a sleazy San Francisco hotel in the early 1950's while on leave from the army, Willeford creates a tale of deception featuring the crooked detective Jacob C. Blake and his nemesis-a beautiful, insane young woman who is the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect. Blake becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue and multiple murders in this exciting period tale. First published 1956.
Art student Ralph Tone is working in Miami as a bellboy. He meets Hollywood hopeful Maria Duigan and falls head over heels for the ambitious beauty. As Ralph fuels his obsession by booze, pills, and lack of sleep, they both quickly become entangled with sleazy pornographer Donald McKay. Charles Willeford's MADE IN MIAMI was originally released to the unsuspecting masses in 1958 under the title LUST IS A WOMAN by a publisher incapable of spelling the author's name correctly on the cover. Written in white heat by "the unlikely father of Miami crime fiction" (Atlantic Monthly) to match the requirements of the market, the book remains a textbook example of lurid 1950s pulp fiction. It was also a springboard to the author's later masterpieces MIAMI BLUES and SIDESWIPE.
When Miami Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten yearsbefore moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering he has his former partner, who happens to be nursing a newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn't like thesituation on bit. It doesn't help matters when he is suddenly assigned to work undercover, miles away, outside of his jurisdiction and without his badge, his gun, or his teeth. Soon, he is impersonating a drifter and tringto infiltrate a farm operation suspected of murdering migrant workers. But when he gets there for his job interview, the last thing he is offered is work. In this final installment of the highlyacclaimed Hoke Moseley novels, Charles Willeford's brilliance and expertise show on every page. Equally funny, thrilling, and disturbing, The Way We Die Now is a triumphant finish to one of the most original detectiveseries of all time. "From the Trade Paperback edition.
This Ace-Double combines two of Willeford's classics of hard-boiled fiction into one volume. 'Hight Priest of California' recounts the story of Russell Haxby, a ruthless used car saleman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. A wry, sardonic tale of lust, hypocrisy and intrigue, it deserves its reputation as one of the ballsiest hard-boiled tales ever written. 'Wild Wives' is equally as amoral, sexy and brutal. A tale of deception featuring the crooked detective Jacob Blake, it's packed with intrigue, deceit and multiple murders.
After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn't think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp. Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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