Affiliates
| Works by
Charles Ray Willeford
(Aka Charles Willeford, W. Franklin Sanders, Will Charles)
(Writer)
[January 2, 1919 – March 27, 1988] |
Profile created August 26, 2009
|
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Miami Blues
(1984, 2004)
After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke
Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and
nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when
he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the
hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over
ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into
unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off
with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge,
and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her
ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp.
Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to
bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the
perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all
time.
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New Hope for the Dead
(1985, 2004)
Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh Miami
neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring
stepmother of the decedant, and begins to wonder about dating a witness.
Meanwile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new
chief unless he leaves his beloved, if squalid, suite at the El Dorado
Hotel, and moves downtown. With free housing hard to come by, Hoke is
desperate to find a new place to live. His difficulties are only amplified
by an assignment to re-investigate fifty unsolved murders, the unexpected
arrival of his two teenage daughters, and a partner struggling with an
unwanted pregnancy. With few options and even fewer dollars, he decides
that the suspicious and beautiful stepmother of the dead junkie might be a
compromised solution to all of his problems.
Packed with atmosphere and humor, New Hope for the Dead is a
classic murder mystery by one of the true masters of the genre. Now back
in print, Charles Willeford’s tour de force is an irresistible invitation
to become acquainted with one of the greatest detective characters of all
time.
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Sideswipe (1987, 2005)
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 hooker, a talentless artist, and a clueless retiree. But when
his simple robbery results in ruthless and indiscriminate bloodshed, Hoke
quickly remembers why he is a cop and hurls himself back into the world he
meant to leave behind forever.
A masterly tale of both mid-life crisis and murder, Sideswipe is a
page-turning thriller packed with laughs, loaded with suspense, and
featuring one of the truly original detectives of all time.
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The Way We Die Now
(1988, 2005)
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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Grimhaven (unpublished)
Other Fiction as Charles Willeford
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Made In Miami
(2008)
Art student Ralph Tone is working in Miami as a
bellboy. He meets Hollywood hopeful Maria Duigan and falls head over heels
for the ambitious beauty. As Ralph fuels his obsession by booze, pills,
and lack of sleep, they both quickly become entangled with sleazy
pornographer Donald McKay.
Originally released in 1958 under the title
Lust Is a Woman.
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Deliver Me from Dallas!
(2001)
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The Shark-Infested Custard
(1993, 1996)
Larry Dolman is a rather literal minded ex-cop who
now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's
studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman
who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank
Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of
the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards,
meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes
horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands
and a homicidal husband in the wings—and acting more like hardened
criminals than upstanding citizens.
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A Charles Willeford Omnibus
(1991)
Includes Cockfighter,
Pick-Up,
and
The Burnt Orange Heresy.-
The Black Mass of Brother Springer
(1989, 2004) -
Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye
(1987) -
The Burnt Orange Heresy
(1971)
Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing art critic Jacques Figueras will do
anything - blackmail, burglary, fencing, assassination - to further his
career. Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford expands his
noir palette to include hues of sunny Florida and weird tints of
Surrealism when Figueras takes a job for an art collector who doesn't care
how his art is collected, even if it involves murder.
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The Hombre From Sonora (1971)
Also known as
The Difference
(written under the pseudonym Will Charles).
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Cockfighter
(1962, 1972, 1991)
The dedicated obsession of a fanatical sport. As in
the bullring—to the death. Legal in Florida—illegal in the forty-nine
other states. The iron will of a man, whose entire life was channeled into
one supreme ambition!-
No Experience Necessary
(1982)
"You like it?' she whispered. 'I like it,' he clenched
his teeth, 'I like it, I like it!'-
Understudy for Love
(1961)
When it came to love he was just an
understudy...but he was learning in a hurry!-
The Woman Chaser
(1960)
He could never again scale the heights reached by the epic Lumpy Grits.-
Honey Gal
(1958)
A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation.
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Lust Is a Woman
(1958)
The story of Maria who wanted -- desperately -- to become a movie star!
Re-released in 2008 as Made In Miami.
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High Priest of California/Wild Wives
(1956, 1987)
No woman
could resist his strange cult of lechery!-
Pick-Up
(1955)
In Pick-Up, Charles Willeford has created a work of psychological
suspense that is at once poignant, terrifying, and utterly authentic in
its depcition of alcoholic desire and destruction.-
High Priest of California/Full Moon
(1953)
Includes Willeford's first published novel (High Priest [The world
was his oyster—and women his pearls!]) and Talbot Mundy's Full Moon [A roaring saga of the male
animal on the prowl.]
Writing as W. Franklin Sanders
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The Difference
(1971)
The Difference was
described by Charles Willeford as a post modern western. Filled with
outcasts and misfits, liberally dosed with black humour and jarring
violence, and set in the wild west of 1880's Arizona.
The protagonist, Johnny Shaw returns to southern Arizona to collect his
inheritance, but before long becomes embroiled in a deadly dispute with
the Reardon family, which results in the death of one of the sons. Shaw
flees and finds an unlikely ally in a blacksmith, Jake Dover, who knew and
respected Shaw's father. Dover hides Shaw from the Reardon's, and teaches
him how to use a gun with speed and precision. Finally Shaw returns to
Arizona fo an almighty showdown.
Shaw tells the story from his point of view, believing himself to be
right, but Shaw's professed virtue is at sharp odds with his actions.
Those actions are made especially jarring by Willeford's terse prose,
which adds impact to his character's sudden, simple bursts of violence.
Regarding The Difference, Willeford once gave a student the sound
advice to "read this book, but don't understand it too fast." A morality
play as disguised as genre potboiler, The Difference is a
thinking-man's Western.
Also known as The Hombre From Sonora.
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The Ordainment of Brother Springer: A Play
by Charles Willeford
(July 12, 2009,
Kindle Edition)
This darkly humorous one act play is a riff on
Charles Willeford's "masterpiece" (as it was called by
The Washington
Post), The Black Mass of Brother Springer.
It re-imagines the ordainment of Sam Springer -- a drifter novelist -- as
a pastor of the Church of God's Flock in Jacksonville, FL.
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The Old Man at the Bridge (2009,
Kindle Edition)
This short story is a slyly humorous meditation on fishing,
relationships and machismo by the Florida author of Miami Blues
and The Burnt Orange Heresy. -
The Second Half of the Double Feature
(2003)
In this new collection of short stories, vignettes
and autobiographical sketches—many previously unpublished—Charles
Willeford, author of Miami Blues and The Burnt Orange Heresy creates a
mosaic of the absurdities of life in the 20th century. From a malicious
grandmother to prophetic depictions of the power of reality
television—with wry humor and sudden shifts to violence—he seduces, amuses
and repeatedly surprises you.
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Everybody's Metamorphosis
(1988)
The Machine in Ward Eleven
(1963)
" ... Willeford's 1963 pulp classic is a timely
reminder that madness is truly the dark heart of politics. Written at a
time when people still had faith in their elected leaders, Willeford's
book laid bare the American dream. There is an almost Chekhovian
wistfulness in the treatment of his stories, which belies their
considerable -- and still relevant -- impact. `The most eloquently brainy
and exacting pulp fiction ever fabricated!'" --
Village Voice
The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook
(2009) by Charles Willeford ,Don Herron, and Jo
Hammett -
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, Volume II
(1997)
Includes works by Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, and
Robert Polito.
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Weird Show: Sixteen Stories of Horror and the Supernatural
(1971)
Includes works by Charles Schafhauser, Charles Willeford,
David Ely, Frank Herbert; Frank M. Robinson, Fredric Brown, Henry Slesar,
Hugh G. Foster, John Collier, John Reese, Ken W. Purdy, Ray Russell Gold,
Richard Matheson, Roger Dionne, Tennessee Williams, and William F. Nolan
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Is Listed As A Favorite Of
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