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.
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When I first decided to take a crack at crime writing in my early twenties I was working as a doorman on Park Avenue and 58th Street in NYC. My work location actually turned out to be just what the doctor ordered because right around the corner was the 58th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Every lunch break for several years was spent methodically working my way through its popular fiction and mystery stacks. Out of the hundreds of novels I went through there appeared a small group of writers that stood out, at least to my tastes, as head and shoulders above the rest. Charles Willeford and his greatest creation the unforgettable Miami PD Detective Hoke Mosely was at the top of that group. Many people have tried to pin down exactly why Hoke and his adventures are so appealing. To me it is their unpredictability. In every one you are never sure what is going to happen next, a murder? a hilarious joke? an armed robbery? a fight to the death? Everything and anything always seems to come out of left field. The one thing for certain is that you will be riveted and that Hoke’s quirky actions, reactions and unique take on things will truly leave you shaking your head and wondering if you’ve just been hoodwinked or thoroughly educated in the fundamentally absurd realities of human life. If you are squeamish about hard boiled R rated violence and sex these books are probably not for you. But my thirsty twenty three year old American male eyes could not get enough of Willeford’s slyly wise crime fiction genius. Miami Blues is the more famous excellent first in the series but The Way We Die Now is my favorite. Enjoy!
The Way We Die Now was the last of the Hoke Moseley novels as Willeford died of a heart attack on March 27, 1988, not long after its publication.
Miami homicide detective Moseley goes undercover, leaving his two daughters and his former partner—who is nursing her infant—just as a man he convicted ten years ago is released from prison and moves into the house across the street from him. Moseley surrenders his badge, deserts his family, leaves his jurisdiction, his teeth, and makes a bloody mess of an undercover assignment.
Why would a man risk so much? Leave his family in danger?
Willeford, in the style of Elmore Leonard, writes hard-nose mysteries where the characters are revealed through their actions. The knucklehead action and decisions Moseley makes drove me batty. But on the last page, I saw I was not alone. In a classic final page, true to its genre’s roots, Willeford reveals that his flawed character was incapable of escaping himself. His destruction lies within.
Taunt. Tight. Fast. Sometimes humorous. Often violent. This is a hard-boiled detective tale told with great economy of words.