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Sideswipe

(Hoke Moseley #3)

Charles Willeford,

Lawrence Block (Goodreads Author) (Introduction)

4.04 · Rating details · 1,017 ratings · 109 reviews

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 ...more

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Paperback, First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Edition, 215 pages

Published March 8th 2005 by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard (first published 1987)

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· 1,017 ratings · 109 reviews

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Jun 27, 2015 James Thane rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-fiction, charles-willeford, hoke-moseley

This is the third book in Charles Willeford's excellent series featuring Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley. As the book opens, Hoke, although still only in his forties, wakes up to a full-blown mid-life crisis. He's completely unable to function irrespective of his responsibilities to his two teenage daughters who live with him, to his department, and to his partner, Ellita Sanchez, who is eight months pregnant (not by Hoke) and who also lives in Hoke's home.

Unable to cope, Hoke takes a leav This is the third book in Charles Willeford's excellent series featuring Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley. As the book opens, Hoke, although still only in his forties, wakes up to a full-blown mid-life crisis. He's completely unable to function irrespective of his responsibilities to his two teenage daughters who live with him, to his department, and to his partner, Ellita Sanchez, who is eight months pregnant (not by Hoke) and who also lives in Hoke's home.

Unable to cope, Hoke takes a leave of absence from his job and retreats to Singer Island, where his wealthy father lives. He takes a job running a small apartment building for his father and swears that he will never leave the island again.

In the meantime, Stanley Sinkiewicz, an elderly retiree who has moved to Florida from Detroit has a brush with the law and, although he is completely innocent, he is briefly forced to share a jail cell with a man claiming to be Robert Smith.

"Smith" is really a psychopathic career criminal named Troy Louden. He has a gift for reading people and immediately pegs Stanley for the sad, lonely man he is at heart. Louden befriends Stanley, schooling him in the way to best deal with the authorities, and before long, Stanley is convinced that Troy is his new best friend.

Louden is desperately hoping to have the charges against him dropped before a fingerprint check is returned and the police discover his real identity. To this end, he asks Stanley to do him a "small favor" once he is released, and, totally won over by his new buddy, the old man agrees. The ploy works and Louden, now free, enlists Stanley to help him pull off a big job he is planning.

Meanwhile, Hoke Mosley is discovering that it's a lot harder to simplify his life than he had hoped. His father is determined to help him get a new job with the local police force, although Hoke has absolutely no interest in the job. His younger daughter joins him on the island further complicating matters, and the tenants in the apartment house generally prove to be a major pain in the butt.

The Mosley story and the Stanley/Louden story proceed along parallel tracks and for a while the reader is left to wonder how Willeford is ever going to link them up. But it really doesn't matter because both stories are very entertaining.

Willeford has populated this book with a number of unique and very interesting characters and between the lines, he has a great deal to say about the nature of family and about the workings of the capitalist system in the United States. All in all, it's a very entertaining book that should appeal to large numbers of readers. ...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Toby rated it really liked it

Shelves: black-as-night

Hoke Moseley truly is a one of a kind protagonist and Sideswipe is his most uniquely Willefordian case yet. A detective novel where the crime occurs in the last chapter, that alternates between the plotting of a heist and the workings of a policeman are not exactly rare you might say but in the hands of Charles Willeford this generic plot takes on a whole new life.

Instead of intricate details of who goes where and when, a recce of the bank in question and potential getaway routes led by a crimin Hoke Moseley truly is a one of a kind protagonist and Sideswipe is his most uniquely Willefordian case yet. A detective novel where the crime occurs in the last chapter, that alternates between the plotting of a heist and the workings of a policeman are not exactly rare you might say but in the hands of Charles Willeford this generic plot takes on a whole new life.

Instead of intricate details of who goes where and when, a recce of the bank in question and potential getaway routes led by a criminal mastermind we are treated to the chess like machinations of a criminal psychopath as seen through the eyes of a clueless Florida retiree.

And anybody who's picked up a Hoke Moseley novel will happily tell you that Hoke is no hero cop, no genius detective, no gumshoe with keen insight in to the criminal mind, Hoke is a middle aged man without any teeth currently going through a midlife crisis as he faces up to living with his two teenaged daughters and his former detective partner currently eight months pregnant, all the while being inundated with mind numbing desk work.

The majority of the novel then is NOT your typical pulp crime shenanigans; it is a treatise on how two men are lost in an America changing beyond their recognition or their abilities to cope, there's an affecting look at how family can mean many different things to different people and can be made up of many different people not just those you are born to, and yet Hoke is still a decent cop who does some solid work when not wearing yellow jumpsuits and moonlighting as an apartment manager to avoid responsibilities.

The invention of Stanley the retired automotive worker is a particular high point for me, the poor clueless guy who just wants to find a place for himself in society with what's left of his life has a true innocence to the way he sees the world and the way he is introduced to the reader is the work of a genius. Willeford twists and turns the reader around in that opening chapter until it ends with a full on "holy fuck, did that really just happen?!" moment. Willeford was a prolific and much respected author but this has to be right up there with his finest moments, and probably the finest moments ever captured in crime fiction. ...more

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Jan 22, 2021 Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-detective-thriller

The third in Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely series, and by far the best of the three, the best written, where Hoke’s character is well-fleshed out (and he’s out of shape, too). I’m not saying that there aren’t pleasures to be had in the reading of the first two, Miami Blues and New Hope for the Dead, for sure. I much prefer my mysteries with angst and anguish and existential dread, but this one clearly highlights the funny stuff and I laughed quite a bit, actually. (Laughter needed in conjuncti The third in Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely series, and by far the best of the three, the best written, where Hoke’s character is well-fleshed out (and he’s out of shape, too). I’m not saying that there aren’t pleasures to be had in the reading of the first two, Miami Blues and New Hope for the Dead, for sure. I much prefer my mysteries with angst and anguish and existential dread, but this one clearly highlights the funny stuff and I laughed quite a bit, actually. (Laughter needed in conjunction with US inauguration, and related issues). I couldn’t help see Hoke as Paul Giamatti, who was also in a popular movie, Sideways, and Hoke’s life is going sideways here, too, for most of the book.

In this one two main separate plotlines converge; in the first, Hoke, overworked, has a kind of breakdown and “retires” (takes an unpaid leave) from the Miami police force to manage an apartment building for his father Frank on Singer Island; one daughter drops out of high school to work in a car wash, the other may have an eating disorder. He’s broke, disillusioned. He still has a house he is renting with his eight-month-pregnant (police) partner, Ellita Sanchez.

The other plotline involves a retired auto worker, Stanley, who ends up in jail, wrongfully accused of molesting a minor, and there meets a psychopathic lifetime criminal, Tracy.

“What’s a psychopath, Tracy?” the old, trusting Stanley asks.
“A psychopath makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
“You mean you don’t know the difference?”
“No, no! I know the difference, I just don’t give a shit.”

The old guy wants a more interesting life so agrees to the more edgy life of crime. He listens for hours to Tracy, a pretty funny smooth-talkin’ philosopher psycho who befriends and takes him in on one of his robbery schemes (gone wrong), also undertaken by a disfigured stripper who can’t dance and a terrible artist, which then involves Hoke’s partner getting shot, the crime roping Hoke back into policework.

The conclusion is suddenly more serious and violent than I expected, given the humor of the book, but well done and satisfying. What I noticed is that both Hoke and Stanley are both lost sideways American guys, and so finally there’s really a kind of existential undercurrent Willeford accomplishes, and we like both these schleppy guys.
...more

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Sep 11, 2018 Adam Howe rated it it was amazing

Great stuff. You get the sense that Willeford almost resented the borderline commercial success of his Hoke Moseley books, and enjoyed rubbing unsuspecting readers' faces in the dirt... not to mention screwing with his publishers! ...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Cbj rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-like-friends, alienation, americana, pulp-fiction, tired-of-modern-life

I almost felt like I was reading a crime fiction novel written by Raymond Carver. Melancholic crime fiction?. I don't know if SIDESWIPE can be classified as a crime fiction novel. After Willeford achieved success with MIAMI BLUES, he really cranked it up a few notches, wrote the novels that he wanted to write. Hoke Moseley is the exact opposite of a tough cop. He seems to be resigned to his fate, stops talking to his police partner and daughter and moves back in with his father who gives him a j ...more

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Jan 06, 2012 Igor Trushevsky rated it it was amazing

The Hoke Moseley novels are about a detective, but they are not novels in the detective genre. Charles Willeford never dangles any clues or misdirection in front of the readers, and the actual crime that needs to be solved doesn't happen until the tail end of the book. Instead, he holds the readers interest with remarkably vivid portraits of his characters, various locales in Miami area and of course the themes he brings up (How easily decent (but gullable) people can sometimes be turned to crim ...more

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Jul 18, 2018 Jeff rated it really liked it

Shelves: hardboiled_crime_read

Both parallel threads of this novel seem to meander, never seeming to move the story forward. But don't be deceived—the two unrelated narratives come together in a crashing climax. Halfway through the book the action starts building momentum so slowly the reader is not fully aware that the story is moving forward at breakneck speed by the last two chapters.

Interestingly enough, the book is a rewrite of an earlier Willeford novel No Experience necessary, or at least the Pop Sinkiewicz half. ...more

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Nov 28, 2015 Carla Remy rated it really liked it

The character of Stanley Sinciewicz, and what happens to him, is the best part.

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Nov 30, 2011 Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The description on the back of the jacket begins with the line, “There comes a time in every detective's life when he's had enough.” After reading that, and not knowing anything about the character, Hoke Mosely, you might assume this story was about a law and order man pushed to the edge of sanity by the degenerate dredges of society, akin to a right-wing revenge fantasy like Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry or Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey in Death Wish. You’d be wrong, kind of, but you’d also be The description on the back of the jacket begins with the line, “There comes a time in every detective's life when he's had enough.” After reading that, and not knowing anything about the character, Hoke Mosely, you might assume this story was about a law and order man pushed to the edge of sanity by the degenerate dredges of society, akin to a right-wing revenge fantasy like Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry or Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey in Death Wish. You’d be wrong, kind of, but you’d also be pleasantly surprised.

What pushes Hoke Mosley to the edge isn’t so much the scum of the earth committing senseless acts of depravity—although there’s plenty of this; Willeford is delightfully unafraid of being politically incorrect in his depictions of police life—but more mundane, everyday problems: a teenage daughter who wants to drop out of high school, another daughter who develops an eating disorder, busywork at the office, financial strife, and a pregnant roommate/coworker who eats her eggs in the most excruciating way possible. All this leads Hoke to a nervous breakdown that takes him out of Miami and back to the sleepy rural Florida vacation community he grew up in, charged with only the mundane tasks of maintaining his father’s hotel in an effort to “simplify his life.”

Meanwhile, adopting the same parallel narrative structure from Miami Blues, Willeford introduces us to Stanley, a retired auto-worker who disowns his family after they fail to rush to his aid when he’s falsely accused of molesting a child, and Troy, a self-described psychopath who enlists Stanley’s aid to get out of prison and later recruits Stanley for his gang/family (Troy also admits to being an admirer of Charles Manson), along with a struggling Barbadian painter, and an emotionally damaged and physically deformed stripper.

The middle of the story dragged a little, and at first the premise of Hoke having a nervous breakdown seemed a little forced, but by the time you reach the climax, almost everything seems to come together brilliantly. Willeford has a gift for using minute but bizarre details to either set up jaw-dropping plot twists or hilarious diatribes that seem to stem from his own cynical grievances. Without giving too much away, the robbery gone awry—again an element repeated from Miami Blues—is one of the best, and most brutal chapters of crime fiction I’ve ever read. It might be his personal history as a decorated combat veteran, but the man knows how to write a gruesome gunshot wound.

What I didn’t like: If there’s one criticism I have, it’s that he writes pretty weak female and minority characters. A reoccurring theme between this book and Miami Blues is whores who are good at housework, weak-willed and irrational, they sit around being told what to do by a man who abuses and exploits them, although this could be Willeford commenting on the degrading effects on the psyche of life in the sex industry. Or he could just be a misogynist.

What I did like: The parallels. He jokes about this with a throwaway line in the last chapter, but I really enjoyed the way Willeford juxtaposes events in Stanley’s/Troy’s timeline with events in Hoke’s. He emulates but differentiates the climax and the ending of this book from the ending and climax of Miami Blues. Ellita, Hoke’s partner, attempts to apprehend Troy by the book, firing a warning shot when she attempts to apprehend him, and she’s punished for this, but when Hoke encounters Junior at the end of Miami Blues, he takes the law into his own hands, executing him coldly and deliberately. At the beginning of the book as Hoke’s family falls apart, Troy’s family assembles, and at the end of the book as Hoke’s family rejoins in resolution, Troy’s family disperses in bloody carnage. We’re left not entirely sure if Troy really wanted to live happily ever after at The Hotel Oluffsson (I’ve been there!) with his family/gang, or if he merely snapped when a seemingly routine robbery went haywire due to mundane details overlooked, thus serving as a callback to the inciting incident of Hoke’s nervous breakdown. ...more

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Jan 24, 2014 Alex rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, crime-and-mysteries

Such sadness. I have only one more Hoke Moseley book to go. The late and great Charles Willeford passed away after 4 of this series, leaving behind a magnificent legacy. His genius lies in the minutiae of his character's development. In the Hoke Moseley series, he employs the brilliant technique of alternating each chapter between the daily lives of Hoke and his immediate family and colleagues and the villains as they plan their crime. As such, the crimes don't actually occur until late in each ...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Tracie rated it it was amazing

I'm not sure what's going on, but I think I've started to develop a little crush on Hoke Moseley. I know, right? I mean, he pees his pants within the first ten pages of this book. But I feel such a strong affection toward him for some reason.

The structure of this book is more similar to Miami Blues in that every other chapter is about Hoke, and the odd ones deal with another storyline about a criminal sociopath (Troy) who isn't Junior, but might as well be. I completely loved the way it all came ...more

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Nov 11, 2020 🐴 🍖 added it

following the botched supermarket heist things get real anticlimactic real fast, but willbro's command of what i would classify as "sad bachelor stuff" (games of solitaire; adding extra onions to canned stew; shooting the breeze with the downstairs neighbor about horseflies; having strong opinions about the best & worst stouffers frozen entrees) remains unrivaled. gotta love as well the perversity of a crime novel where the detective makes just wildly wrong deductions (lol @ concluding that stan ...more

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Aug 24, 2019 Thomas Pluck rated it it was amazing

As great as Miami Blues. No one writes characters like Willeford and we get some deusies in this one.

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Feb 06, 2021 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Best of the Hoke Moseley novels so far. I’ve got one left, but this’ll be hard to top.

Alternates back and forth between two unrelated stories until a violent intersection at the end. Funny, strange, and twisted.

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Jun 08, 2011 Lil' Grogan rated it liked it

Shelves: pit-spiral, 3-5, crime, chokle

Ballsy. Possibly one of the stranger detective novels I've read. The detective is essentially on break (midlife crisis) and we spend most of the book waiting for the damn crime to be committed!!!

Half of the book follows Moseley trying to simplify his life (with amusing results) and heart-warmingly dealing with his youngest teenaged daughter. The other half follows Stanley, a sad-hack retiree who poisons dogs, and Troy, a criminal psychopath who brings together a "family" to pull off a heist.

Wh ...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Aimee rated it it was ok

Weird book. Not sure that it qualifies as a mystery. Not much of a mystery to it. Just two stories that eventually intersect, with the detective in the story being the point of intersection.

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Jan 13, 2019 Jake rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery-thriller-crime

Alan Sepinwall, my favorite TV critic, has a running gag in his columns where he talks about how he’d like to see a character from whatever show he’s reviewing have a spin-off where they do banal tasks relational to the character’s motives. My personal favorite was the suggestion that goofy Justified gangster Wynn Duffy get a series called Wynnipeg in which he gets continually frustrated at teaching Canadians how to be criminals.

At any rate, three books into the Hoke Moseley series and I feel li Alan Sepinwall, my favorite TV critic, has a running gag in his columns where he talks about how he’d like to see a character from whatever show he’s reviewing have a spin-off where they do banal tasks relational to the character’s motives. My personal favorite was the suggestion that goofy Justified gangster Wynn Duffy get a series called Wynnipeg in which he gets continually frustrated at teaching Canadians how to be criminals.

At any rate, three books into the Hoke Moseley series and I feel like this one, as well as its immediate prequel, are basically a Sepinwall spinoff series come to life.

Miami Blues, the first one in the series, was one of my favorite novels I read in 2018. A raucous, hilarious crime thriller, pitting cop and criminal in the worst game of cat-and-mouse ever. As I had already read, and loved other Willeford works (Cockfighter was my favorite crime read of 2017), I fast tracked the Hoke Moseley on my ever expanding TBR list.

Sadly, the second one New Hope for the Dead did not meet expectations. There were funny gags and Willeford is great at writing characters and creating a lived in Miami, even if its cynically presented. Most of the novel was about Hoke dealing with family issues and solving a rash of uninteresting crimes on the side.

When this one began with Hoke being sidelined from his family, I liked where it was going but sadly, it soon circles back into family stuff, with a parallel story of the criminals getting ready to commit The Big Crime. When the two finally intersect near the end, it’s great. The last forty pages are wonderful. But for the most part, Sideswipe is a remix of New Hope with a better ending.

Instead of getting “Hoke Moseley, curmudgeonly Miami detective”, I’m getting the spinoff series where said detective helps people do mundane stuff in their daily lives. Willeford’s such a great writer that I find myself enjoying this nonetheless. But it doesn’t make for a great story, definitely not a great crime read at least. And that’s fine. It’s just a little disappointing. ...more

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Oct 27, 2020 Pete rated it it was amazing

hard to say whether these books are great because the criminals are so odd/tenderly sketched, or because hoke the nominal hero is such a dirtbag, or because you recognize yourself in both. doesn't actually matter. this particular moment in american history feels like a bad wedgie so it's been a joy to disappear into these for a few hours a day ...more

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Oct 01, 2016 Mary Overton added it

True noir, gritty and sensational, and yet the funniest crime book I have ever read ... told in a voice so dry and dead-pan that you can miss outrageous lines. And the story is full of the best bad guys ever.

Homicide detective Hoke Moseley suffers a mid-life crisis and shuts down, literally. He won't talk and won't get out of bed, so his family and partner bundle him off to his father's house.
"Hoke Moseley spent the next three days in the back guest bedroom in his father's house. ....
"He didn' True noir, gritty and sensational, and yet the funniest crime book I have ever read ... told in a voice so dry and dead-pan that you can miss outrageous lines. And the story is full of the best bad guys ever.

Homicide detective Hoke Moseley suffers a mid-life crisis and shuts down, literally. He won't talk and won't get out of bed, so his family and partner bundle him off to his father's house.
"Hoke Moseley spent the next three days in the back guest bedroom in his father's house. ....
"He didn't know why he couldn't bring himself to answer Ellita, his daughters, Bill Henderson, or old Doc Fairbain ... but he had known somehow, cunningly, that if he didn't say anything to anyone, eventually they would all let him alone and he would never have to go down to the Homicide Division and work on those cold fucking cases again. ....
"Hoke did not, after his first night's troubled sleep, take any more of the tiny black Equavils. They hadn't made him feel funny while he was awake (although they must have been responsible for his weird and frightening dreams), but while he WAS awake, they had robbed him of any feelings, and his mind became numb. If he took four of them a day, as the doctor ordered, he would soon become a zombie. Besides, Hoke didn't need any chemicals to maintain the wonderful peace of mind he now enjoyed. The bedroom was cool, and although he wasn't hungry, the little he did eat when Inocencia brought in his trays was delicious. He told himself that he would never have to go back to the police department. All he had to do was lie quietly on the bed, or sit by the glass doors and look out at the blue-green pool or at the occasional boats that passed on the inland waterway ignoring the NO WAKE signs, and everything would be all right. There was no need to think about anything, to worry about anything, because, as long as he kept his mouth closed and refused to react to anybody, he would be let alone. When a man didn't talk back or answer questions, people couldn't stand it for very long.
"When Hoke looked back later, those three days had been the happiest he had ever known, and he often wondered if he would ever have such peace again. But he had also known, or suspected - even at the time - that it was too wonderful to last." pp. 27-28 ...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Eric_W rated it really liked it

Shelves: police-procedural

Imagine this: adding Grape-Nuts to a sieve so you can run hot water to soften them up so you can eat them without putting in your false teeth; then gumming them at the dining room table while reading the sports section. Hoke, a homicide investigator lives with his partner Ellita who has the unbearable habit of letting the egg yolks run through her teeth. Ellita, who is pregnant, helps with the rent and the care of Hoke two teenage daughters.

Shades of Ed McBain, the writing, I mean. Hoke gets fed ...more

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Jan 06, 2017 Cindy Mooney rated it it was ok

I feel the need to review this because a friend recommended this book to me and I feel bad for giving it only 2 stars but I have reasons. I would say it's more of a 2.5 almost 3 star than a low 2 but I can't give half stars so there you go.
First I'd like to say I read a lot of crime/mystery novels so it's not the entire genre I don't like. I've heard this classified as noir and while I have pretty much no idea what that is I can say maybe its not for me? I've also watched movies that people sai ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Piker7977 rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, crime-mystery

This one is more like 3.5 stars.

Offbeat Miami detective Hoke Moseley has reached the end of his rope. Suffering from a nervous breakdown he moves out to a remote Florida community in order to escape the complexities of his life. Instead of chasing down murder suspects, Hoke manages an apartment complex and attempts to keep his head buried deep in the sand. Retired auto worker Stanley Sinkiewicz is sent to jail under false pretenses and makes the acquaintance of a psychopathic criminal. His new f ...more

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Oct 25, 2014 Andrew rated it really liked it

It isn't often that you pick up a novel because of a reference in another book. So as I read Val Macdermid's 'Fever in the bone' there is a scene in which her hero is browsing his deceased fathers book shelves and sees books by Charles willeford. Intrigued I picked this up in the library and really enjoyed the story and character of Hoke Moseley a tired Miami detective who has a mild breakdown and moves back to his fathers home on sick leave to caretake his dads condo buliding. Running parrallel ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Keir rated it really liked it

Following a breakdown of sorts, Hoke leaves Miami for Singer Island, where he hopes to create a less complicated life for himself. (Hint: it involves a wardrobe of wash-and-wear jumpsuits.) Meanwhile, psycho Troy Louden is planning a big robbery with a very unlikely gang. As I was reading, I kept thinking that this one wasn't as good as the previous series installment, New Hope for the Dead, partly because Singer Island is less interesting than Miami, partly because the two plotlines are unconne ...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Phyllis rated it liked it

I have the Book Club Edition of this book published by St. Martin's Press in 1987. This is my first Hoke Moseley novel. The story started slowly for me, but the author writes with such rich detail and the characters are so quirky that I got hooked. Towards the end I couldn't put the book down for long. Using the contrast between the voices and actions of Troy Louden (a bad guy) and Stanley Sinkiewicz (a not-so-bad guy), the author takes jabs at parts of society. I think the author is a bit of a ...more

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Nov 20, 2010 Jeremy Hornik rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The book ends magnificently.

To get around the heavy, crazy traffic at the Golden Glades exchange, which every wise Floridian avoided, if possible, Hoke left the Sunshine Parkway at the Hollywood exit and picked up the I-95 for the rest of the way into the city. As the thousands of lighted windows in the tall Miami buildings came into view, Stanley spoke for the first time on the trip.
“What’s going to happen to me, Sergeant?”
“Hell, Pop,” Hoke said, not unkindly, “except for the paperwork, it al ...more

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May 12, 2015 Jamie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: crimes-and-capers, the-dirty-south, criminal-element

I like a story that goes 65 mph in a 55, and this one is pushing 40 in a 55. It’s the minutiae that killed me though. A lot a lot of detail, even in the dialogue, and there was a point to it and a payoff, but I wasn’t in the mood to settle in and pass that kind of time with these characters, not right now.

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Jul 25, 2015 Charles Wilson rated it it was ok

Not the best of the Hoke Mosley novels, and you'll probably be lost if you begin here because the plots are somewhat serial. I'd recommend Miami Blues. ...more

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Aug 19, 2020 Glass River marked it as fic-guided

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Readers addicted to Elmore Leonard will find in Willeford’s Sideswipe a candidate for the best novel Leonard never wrote. Leonard thought so too, and graciously permitted the publisher to use his self-deprecating praise in their advertisements: ‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.’ A close-run thing, fans would say.
Like Leonard’s Swag, Sideswipe is a story of that most banal of modern American crimes, the supermarket stick-up. It flirts with another threadbare cliché (‘the Readers addicted to Elmore Leonard will find in Willeford’s Sideswipe a candidate for the best novel Leonard never wrote. Leonard thought so too, and graciously permitted the publisher to use his self-deprecating praise in their advertisements: ‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.’ A close-run thing, fans would say.
Like Leonard’s Swag, Sideswipe is a story of that most banal of modern American crimes, the supermarket stick-up. It flirts with another threadbare cliché (‘the gang that couldn’t shoot straight’) in the form of the inept band of villains who make up the dramatis personae. At the forefront is Stanley Sinkiewicz, a seventy-one-year-old retiree from Ford’s Detroit assembly plant who is living (call it that) his last years in Riviera Beach, Florida. Stanley is the last of a breed – the men who used to hand-paint the decorative stripes on the sides of Ford cars. Under pressure from Japanese competition, he was automated out of a job just in time for retirement. And the cars have lost their last humanising touch, ‘because a ruled line is a “dead” line, and a perfect, ruled line lacked the insouciant raciness a hand-drawn line gives to a finished automobile’. As with automobiles, so with modern America, we understand. As Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom observes, modern cars don’t express anything about America. They’re tin cans on wheels. The same glum point was made on screen by Clint Eastwood in his valediction to old America, Gran Torino (2008). You want to know where the country went wrong – look at the freeways.
A bizarre series of accidents deposits the dumb but upright Stanley in jail for child molesting. In the cells, he meets a disarmingly friendly sociopath, Troy Loudon, who instructs him on how to manipulate the psychiatrists who will soon be examining him. Stanley is duly released, and in return dispatches a note which will discourage Troy’s accuser (‘If you don’t drop the charges, I’ll kill your baby and your wife and then you’). It works, Troy stays some time with Stanley (now deserted by his unsympathetically prudish wife) and continues to mesmerise the old man with romantic claptrap about the old, ‘live’ America that used to be before automated straight lines took over. Stanley follows Troy to Miami Beach, where the misfit gang musters. There is geriatric Stanley, sociopathic Troy, a Bajan non-objective painter (whom Stanley helpfully instructs in the art of painting an unruled straight line), and Dale, a go-go dancer with a delicious body whose face was beaten into pulp by an enraged protector: ‘Her nose was crushed almost flat and the left nostril was partly missing, as if cut away with a razor blade. Both of her sunken cheeks contained rough and jagged scars, and some of those holes looked large enough to contain marbles.’ The delusion fostered by Troy is that the takings of the hold-up will allow the artist to study in New York and enable Dale to get plastic surgery in Haiti. Stanley goes along out of misplaced paternal motives, to look after Troy.
The trick in Sideswipe is keeping the preliminary comedy bubbling until a genuinely horrific and blood-curdling last chapter which fairly clubs the still chuckling reader. It’s very well done. At the same time, and with the same consummate sleight of hand, Willeford contrives to connect the hold-up fiasco with the apparently irrelevant story of a burned-out detective-turned-hotel-manager he’s kept going on the sidelines of the main business. That detective is Willeford’s series hero, Hoke Moseley, who features in a string of novels, beginning with Miami Blues (1984), which may be aptly summed up by the words of a congenially sardonic Karl Kraus: ‘Life is an effort that deserves a better cause’. ...more

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Dec 15, 2020 Goodolddoggy rated it really liked it

If you are a fan of Willeford, one of the most underrated of crime novelists in America, despite the films ("Cockfighter," and "Miami Blues") made from his work, then this novel will appeal to you. There is irreverent humor that will make the book and its story vivid and immediate for interested readers. If you have never encountered Willeford, "Miami Blues" might be a good place to start. It's too bad there aren't more Hoke Moseley novels, for his account of life as a Miami detective is true to ...more

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About Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford

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Charles Willeford was a remarkably fine, talented and prolific writer who wrote everything from poetry to crime fiction to literary criticism throughout the course of his impressively long and diverse career. His crime novels are distinguished by a mean'n'lean sense of narrative economy and an admirable dearth of sentimentality. He was born as Charles Ray Willeford III on January 2, 1919 in Little Charles Willeford was a remarkably fine, talented and prolific writer who wrote everything from poetry to crime fiction to literary criticism throughout the course of his impressively long and diverse career. His crime novels are distinguished by a mean'n'lean sense of narrative economy and an admirable dearth of sentimentality. He was born as Charles Ray Willeford III on January 2, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Willeford's parents both died of tuberculosis when he was a little boy and he subsequently lived either with his grandmother or at boarding schools. Charles became a hobo in his early teens. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age sixteen and was stationed in the Philippines. Willeford served as a tank commander with the 10th Armored Division in Europe during World War II. He won several medals for his military service: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre. Charles retired from the army as a Master Sergeant. Willeford's first novel "High Priest of California" was published in 1953. This solid debut was followed by such equally excellent novels as "Pick-Up" (this book won a Beacon Fiction Award), "Wild Wives," "The Woman Chaser," "Cockfighter" (this particular book won the Mark Twain Award), and "The Burnt Orange Heresy." Charles achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with four outstanding novels about hapless Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley: "Miami Blues," "New Hope for the Dead," "Sideswipe," and "The Way We Die Now." Outside of his novels, he also wrote the short story anthology "The Machine in Ward Eleven," the poetry collections "The Outcast Poets" and "Proletarian Laughter," and the nonfiction book "Something About A Soldier." Willeford attended both Palm Beach Junior College and the University of Miami. He taught a course in humanities at the University of Miami and was an associate professor who taught classes in both philosophy and English at Miami Dade Junior College. Charles was married three times and was an associate editor for "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine." Three of Willeford's novels have been adapted into movies: Monte Hellman delivered a bleakly fascinating character study with "Cockfighter" (Charles wrote the script and has a sizable supporting role as the referee of a cockfighting tournament which climaxes the picture), George Armitage hit one out of the ballpark with the wonderfully quirky "Miami Blues," and Robinson Devor scored a bull's eye with the offbeat "The Woman Chaser." Charles popped up in a small part as a bartender in the fun redneck car chase romp "Thunder and Lightning." Charles Willeford died of a heart attack at age 69 on March 27, 1988. ...more

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“Smoking comforts ordinary men, but I'm not an ordinary man. There aren't many like me left. And it's a good thing for the world that there isn't. There'll always be a few of us in America in every generation. Because only a great country like America can produce men like me. I'm not a thinker, I'm a doer.” — 3 likes

“By the end of a short walk, the septic tip of a cane probably collects enough germs to destroy a small city.” — 2 likes

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Sideswipe

(Hoke Moseley #3)

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