Understudy for Death, by Charles Willeford

I LOVED Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley novels. Read them 25 years ago and thought they were the closest I could find to Elmore Leonard.

This book, I wasn't so enthusiastic about. Good writing, but lazy plot. The most interesting thing about the book: the attitudes toward women and relationships and sex and sexual assault and suicide are so stunningly outdated! I'm guessing Willeford's attitudes were more or less mainstream at the time, and it was amazing to read this book and see how far our attitudes have shifted. It was kind of heartwarming actually, to see how much progress we've made. So that was basically my experience of this book: doing a fair amount of skimming and then reading the stuff that gave me sociological insights into the time. I found it interesting, and I don't regret reading this novel, but I didn't get the kind of enjoyment out of it that one usually hopes to get from novels.

(I wonder: if I read the Hoke Moseley novels now, would I find them similarly outdated? I've reread Leonard's books from the 80's and they held up quite well for me.)