this is...the 7th? from willeford for me...and i just finished another...that...i can't for the life of me remember the title of. heh! (New Hope for the Dead) it was a hoke moseley story, though...remember the second e there in his name, please...and...glancing at the brief synopsis of this one, the timing of this one follows the one i just finished...as in that one, one storyline is hoke trying to find a place to live...in miami...to conform to the rule regulation the whatnot that miami cops live in miami....plus, his new partner in that one, ellita, or something like that, some lady that might could be cuban...was pregnant...and the description for this one speaks of a newborn, or newborns...well...it's kinda like reading the news...why bother, right? the establishment media is busy playing anal tongue darts w/obama, somehow avoiding a massive e-coli infection...unlike the commander...remember him? swallowing turd before it was sucked back into the anus? yeah...so...why bother?whereas, stories here...one ought to pay attention, so i'll try.this one has an intro by donald westlake...says willeford "wrote very good books for a very long time without anybody noticing." "and then along came hoke moseley."okay.story begins:tiny bock heaved his bulk from the sand chair.he stood silently in the clearing for a moment listening, but all he could hear was the whir of insects and the scuttling of a few foraging wood rats. he folded the red-and-green webbed chair, took it to the black pickup and threw it in the back. he opened the cab door and reached for the paper sack on the seat.heh! and one of the things i noticed in that last willeford story i read, one i just now finished, one i can't for the life of me recall the title--in my defense, i am reading this one like the other on the kindle, and it's not like the title page/cover page is there every time you set it down----anyway...i'd noticed the dialogue...all of it good...even the few times hoke seems to say something somewhat off the wall......that was the intent, i believe...a quirk of hoke's...and now i'm trying to remember what it was. oh yeah...something about a dog. heh! i think he was trying to throw the suspect. threw me, too...so...yeah...so here's a nice opening, all action, developing character.onward and upward. update, finished, 22 sep 12, saturday evening, 7:56 p.m. e.s.t.another good hoke moseley story from willeford. moseley is an easy character to like...foibles and all. i'm a bit disappointed w/ellita running off to get married to...that man...but what can one do?the things that were left hanging at the end of the previous story...see above...are addressed here...and...hoke gets a promotion. the new chief apparently is a worker-bee, or something, the way he set up things before the big promotion. hoke solves another cold-case...with the tutored-help of gonzalez...heh!...and the initiative of another cop who drives a patrol car.all-in-all, good story-telling, i think...willeford sets up the various scenes...several sentences of description to set the place, to set characters in the place...the action rolls...the story advances...the reader is entertained.good read. more more more.
The fourth and final installment in Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely series finds Hoke undercover investigating the murder of Haitian immigrants, possibly at the hands of their employer. There are also two other story lines: one involving an ex con who Hoke put away for murdering his brother, recently freed from prison and living across the street from Hoke and his family, and another involving a cold case, the murder of a physician, the suspect being the victim’s partner now married to his widow and living in his house.The story lines involving the ex-con and the cold case mix well together, and you expect the undercover mission—which interrupts their developments—to somehow tie it all together. But that doesn’t really seem to happen. There are some interesting implications to the investigation. Hoke’s journey into rural Reagan-era Florida is darkly funny, but also offers a stark depressing contrast of poverty and lawlessness in the deep south vs. a gentrifying modern diverse metropolis like Miami. Without giving too much away, the Haitian story line ends much like the robberies in Miami Blues and Sideswipe, with spectacularly vivid brutality and gore. With regard to the villains, justice is done, but it’s the fate of their surviving victims—poor illiterate Haitians— that’s left open and uncertain. Speculating about their fate—will they take the fall for Hoke’s misstep?—offers the only possible link to the rest of the novel, and that may or may not be intentional. Of the four Hoke Moseley books, this is probably the weakest. A lot of details that setup the undercover mission, the cold case investigation, and the paroled convict seem a little porous, less thorough and detail-specific than its predecessors. Similar to New Hope For The Dead the story takes place entirely through Hoke’s point of view, centering around a whodunit. The problem is, we know whodunit after about four chapters, leaving little suspense to keep the reader interested in the case. That’s not to say this isn’t a good read. There are some pretty great parts to this book that only Willeford would write, and I was sorry to finish it knowing this is the last of the series. I highly recommend Hoke Moseley’s exploits to anyone who’s a fan of Elmore Leonard or Raymond Chandler. That’s not to say Willeford wasn’t unique. The world is definitely a less interesting place without him writing about it.
What do You think about The Way We Die Now (2005)?
The enjoyment I had reading this book was offset by the sorrow that this was the last of Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley series. Willeford died shortly after its publication leaving behind a legacy of great noir crime back to the early fifties. After a long and varied career Willeford finally struck real commercial pay dirt with the Hoke series that began with the classic, Miami Blues, in the early 80s. Willeford expertly tells his stories without resorting to cheap sentimentality; the "good" guys are fallible strugglers and the 'bad' guys get their comeuppance. In this one, he is still working cold cases. His partner/housemate, Ellita, has taken a medical retirement from the force to raise her baby son and help Hoke with his 2 teenage daughters. Hoke has to manage an ex crim he put away ten years prior moving in across the street from his house, an incapable new partner in a dead end cold case they are working on and a request from his superior officer to go undercover in upstate Florida to bust a nasty piece of work who is murdering Haitian farm workers. There's plenty of humorous and insightful social commentary, a feature of all Willeford's writing.The saddest thing is that, judging by the ending, Willeford had plenty of material to further explore this unique crime fighter, Hoke Moseley, as he fights to raise his kids and keep his corner of the world as clean as possible. I highly recommend the Moseley series of books
—Alex
It's a crying shame that Charles Willeford went and died just as this series of Hoke Moseley novels was getting going. The Way We Die Now is the fourth and final chapter in Moseley's life on the Miami Police force in the 80s, and as usual you're treated to some fine existential musings, some witty commentary on the changing face of America and Moseley solving crimes in a largely straight forward manner.The book opens with a chapter describing two men killing animals and people, setting the scene for an anticipated investigation you might expect, only Willeford ignores it for the next hundred pages whilst you get reacquainted with his protagonist and get caught up wondering about his new ineffectual partner in homicide, his former partner now retired to be a single mother, positive discrimination within the police force, the influx of Pakistani immigrants to Hoke's neighbourhood and the underhanded manner in which the WASPs try to keep them out, how his two teenaged daughters cope with only Hoke as parent/role model and on and on until when the two killers finally reappear you've completely forgotten that you're reading a crime novel. It's really something and a very special entry in to the ranks of highly lauded crime novels.There's some unexpected and very matter of fact violence popping up in this one, the behaviour of Hoke causing the reader to completely reassess their opinion of him as an intelligent happy go lucky kind of guy with a strong line on doing what's right, to something a little darker perhaps. Oh, how I would have loved to have seen how Willeford developed that further.
—Tfitoby
I've completed the series and am still not sure why I like these books. As I read them, I hear a monotone voice narrating, which shouldn't be a good thing, but it somehow makes the little quirks funnier. Maybe, I like the overall strangeness of the stories themselves. Every time I finish one, I'm left wondering how it fits in with what I think of as storytelling or crime novels, because I don't think they do. Maybe, it's the strange humdrum terror that draws me. (view spoiler)[Or maybe because it was somehow fitting that the last thing published in this series is a joke about damn sandwich. (hide spoiler)]
—Lil' Grogan
