Fun to read, but not a serious crime/mystery novel .....

I almost think Willeford is poking fun at the genre in his books - still, you gotta' love Hoke! ( )

i started slow on this book, but it grew on me in a big way. #3 of Hoke Mosely- in this one Hoke breaks down at work and stops everything - talking, moving - anything. So, he is taken to his father's house at the beach (Riveira). He slowly comes out of it and is said to have a mid-life crises and Hoke takes steps to "simplify his life" - no daughters, no real job, little food, etc. he manages his dad's condo bldg. The other side of the story (Willeford seems to go with the 2 unrelated stories that converge at the end model) is about Stanley Sinkowicz (a retired auto painter left by his wife after a false child molestation charge) who meets Troy Loudoun, a double talking career criminal. Troy devises and supermarket heist with Stanley, his deformed girlfriend and bad artist from Barbados. Suffice it to say, people die and Hoke gets mixed up with the looser gang. Happily Hoke is over his crises and headed back to Miami to take the Detective's exam. ( )

This is the third of Willeford's Hoke Moseley books I've read and my favorite so far. At every turn, this book subverted my expectations, and I'm so glad it did. For most of the book, Hoke is shutting himself away from the world as he suffers burnout. But while he does that, the world outside his bubble continues as it always does with a criminal sociopath collecting an odd "family" around himself to pull off a simole crime tgat has horrifying results. Family is the main theme here, with the book contrasting the families around both the criminal and Hoke. Willeford drives the plot forward relentlessly, but leaves room for oddly touching moments of character development from both families. By the end of the book, Hoke is back on the job, but he's not the same character he was at the beginning.

There's one more book featuring Hoke, and I'm looking forward to reading it, but I'll also be sad that his story is over. ( )

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

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