Charles Willeford has definitely improved with age. His earlier works were a mixed bag. Competent, but no humour. However since the 1980s Willeford has developed a sense of humour which matches his ability to crank out good crime stories, complete with memorable characters. 'Sideswipe' carries on in this tradition.

In 'Sideswipe' with have a violent ex-con, a disfigured ex-stripper, a retiree who just lost his wife, and a talentless artist caught up in some shenanigans. Solving the caper is Hoke Moseley, our quirky cop from the novel 'Miami Blues'. Actually most of 'Sideswipe' concentrates on Hoke and his odd family whereas the crime story itself is a relatively minor element to the book. But overall it works well. The overall effect is funny without being stupid.

Bottom line: competent and fun.

This is it, the classic Florida crime novel. Hoke Moseley's no Travis McGee. In fact Hoke's a LOT like a real person. And poor Stanley, what a great character. This stuff is TRUE Florida, this is precisely what things are like here. Willeford's slow style is just to be enjoyed, he has so much compassion for these incredibly flawed people. One of the top ten ever Florida crime novels.

If you're wondering whether or not it is necessary to've read the first two Hoke Mosley books to appreciate Sideswipe...the answer is a resounding NO. This was my first Hoke book & I absolutely loved it. Willeford had an amazing gift. I never found myself wondering where the story was going. It didn't matter...his storytelling abilities are that good. If the book ever seems slow, it is because Willeford actually takes the time to let you become familiar with the characters. Sideswipe is, on occasion, ugly, but it is more often hilarious. Willeford has a way of making his heroes flawed enough to make them believable. I will read the other Hoke Mosley books, without trepidation, because of what I found in Sideswipe. The quirks of Hoke, Troy, Stanley & the other characters steal the show from the actual mystery. It's almost as if the criminal events were created as a stage to showcase these bizarre characters. The strength of Willeford lies not in the story itself, but more often in the telling of that story. I don't like to give away anything in my reviews, just enjoy a wonderful book.

This is the fourth and last book of Willeford's Hoke Moseley series. If you've read the first three, you'll read this one. Hoke goes slumming and bumming to check out labor abuses in south central Florida and encounters various out-country practices that shock and amuse. There is a gloomy sex scene in this one, but things do eventually get blowed up. I am only sad that Charles Willeford went home after writing this book.

Charles Willeford's well-deserved reputation as a writer of crime novels is based largely on the exploits of Miami police detective Hoke Moseley. In this page-turner, we find the author at the top of his form, with Hoke fully engaged in his life as a cop and family man. While busily solving a "cold" murder case, Hoke is dispatched on a puzzling and hazardous undercover job in a neighboring county. At the same time, a parolee who some years earlier had promised to kill him moves in right across the street from Hoke's house (how this turns out is what separates Willeford from the pack). In the house, Hoke lives with his two teenage daughters and his former officemate Ellita Sanchez and her infant son. With everyone in his unconventional but harmonious family contributing their share, Hoke is free to spend some time in his bedroom, pondering his problems and watching TV cop shows. And how unusual it is to find a cop enjoying a satisfactory family life! In a few brief sentences, Willeford suggests how this is managed - a sort of primer for disfunctional households, perhaps. Throughout the story's beautifully detailed and ingenious turnings, Hoke manages by dint of his experience and common sense to save his skin and do the right thing in general, which in some instances consists in doing nothing. At the end of the novel, he finds himself being coerced by his superiors into accepting a promotion in grade and assignment as head of internal affairs - a position he comes to realize he is well suited for. But that intriguing eventuality would have been the subject of another book, wouldn't it.

This Hoke Moseley book is the best I have ever read. I have read Sideswipe, and it's not nearly as good as The Way We Die Now. It is something that Quentin Tarantino should make a movie from. I will give this book **** stars.

First of all I was glad that a book with such catchy title such as " Miami Blues" was out there because is hard to find fiction books locatined in Miami. I rad the reviews in the book, and the word " marvelous," but as I read on I found myself highly disgusted. The story made Cubans and Latin as same as Miami look like a dump-filled with crimminals. What got me mad was that everybody didn't shed a light to help me have a longlasting fun experience reading.I was disguted by the end since what I read before made tereading unpleasent. It'sgood the book was publish in 1984 because that Miami was not done justice. Sometimes is better to be quiet because not even the reviews seem to fit with such experience. In simple words: it Sucks!!!

Miami Blues is my first Charles Willeford novel but it certainly won't be my last. I remember the film Miami Blues (with Alex Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh). I enjoyed it and hoped the novel would be at least half as good. Thankfully it was even better than the film.

In Miami Blues we have a young psychopathic criminal from California landing at Miami International Airport. All he wants is to steal enough money to live on easy street, and he will not let anything get in his way. Unfortunately bad luck and stupidity are stacked against him. Worse, he partners up with an incredibly sweet yet dumb local girl who doesn't offer value for achieving his goals ... no matter how he manipulates her. Worse still, there is a rather crusty old cop out to get him. No spoilers here, but suffice to say Miami Blues has a good ending.

The best part of Miami Blues is Willeford's excellent capturing of the "feel" of Miami. It's very much like Carl Hiaasen material without the caustic satire (..oh, I should add Miami Blues does have funny bits also). And it doesn't take itself too seriously, as if Charles Willeford wasn't planning to write fine literature but simply a good story. He succeeded very nicely.

Bottom line: a minor jewel amongst the masses of mystery novels. Recommended.

Charles Willeford wrote wonderful true to life's absurdities crime fiction, among his many other accomplishments. This novel (which was made in a movie starring Alec Baldwin) is the first in his only series, starring a much put upon Miami detective named Hoke Moseley. In this initial adventure Hoke runs afoul of an intelligent pyschopath named Freddy Frenger and his ditzy hooker girlfriend while investigating the murder of a Hare Krishna. Along the way Hoke loses his teeth, badge, gun and some of his pride, but never his determination. A mere description of the plot wouldn't begin to do justice to this ironic superb book, full as it is of madcap characters coupled with doses of deadly realism. Very few writers can pull off a mix of the comic and hard boiled, but Willeford was one of those few. Indeed, he was one of the best at it. Read the rest of the books in this series if you can find them, then move on to Willeford's other works and his biography penned by Don Herron.
A 5 stars for sure on this tale of Miami mayhem, murder and mischief.

This is a good book and Mr. Moseley is to be congratulated on a decent job. He has done his research and provided a vivid account of Ciano and the people around him. I do not give this book five stars, however, because it needs editing. It seems in some places Mr. Moseley loses his strong narrative as he relates diary entry after diary entry - seemingly with little connection. Also, the book could have used a glossary containing the names of the principal players in the Italian fascist government. These faults lie not with Mr. Moseley as much as with his editor/publisher. Nevertheless, I rcommend this book as one that provides a fascinating slice of WWII history.

This is a wonderful book. I will probably read it twice, because it is literature as well as history. But is must have been a very tricky book to write. Every person who appears has good reasons to make up lies or shade meanings in discussing or recording the historic events recounted in the book.

It is an amazing cast of characters: Count Ciano, his wife Edda Mussolini, Emilio Pucci, Ciano's many mistresses including at least one German spy, Benito Mussolini, Claretta Petacci, various high party officials from the Fascist era, Hitler, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Goering, Roosevelt, Churchill -- and Allen Dulles and many other spies.

What you get is essentially a work of fiction, contrived variously by each of the many characters. But it works. The author has arranged the material in such a careful way that you can reconstruct for yourself, from the progression of this deeply researched story, what the real truth might have been. It would be hard to say if the net effect is precisely Shakespearean or Freudian, but this book is certainly a page turner.

Count Ciano seems to have been a born actor, a sort of human putty who could mould himself to suit every situation. It was a wonderful skill for a professional diplomat. He was Mussolini's son in law and benefited enormously from his family connection. (Mussolini appears to have benefited from the relationship as well, perhaps in material ways which are not at all clear, but it is clear that Ciano was no mere sycophant).

Ciano was instrumental in deposing Mussolini in 1943, and this work cost him his life. Withal he was not an admirable man, but one cannot help but admire his style, his self-interested drive, his wry intelligence and his physical courage. He had a sense of humor and he was a hedonist in the European manner. He liked golf, whiskey, courtship, warplanes, intrigue and conversation. There is a whole lot of sex in this book. Not overtly, but it is sort of like a motor running somewhere just offstage. It never stops and it tugs the story this way and that. For an English or American reader, this biography offers the first good look at Count Ciano we have ever had. Sixty years after the fact.

Mr. Moseley provides an even-handed review of Ciano; a most complex individual who was a bundle of contradictions. He neither makes him a saint or paints him a villian and attempts to show him in the particular milieu of his time. In the process the reader gains valuable insight into not only the political process of the time but also into the natures of some of the most powerful participants on the world stage of that time, especially Mussolini and Hitler.

Hoke Moseley lives in a residential hotel in Miami Beach. He turns over half of his pay to his ex-wife. He is a sergeant in the Miami police force and needs to move into Miami. Suddenly he has his two teenage daughters staying with him and his partner is pregnant. He cannot afford decent housing and has been tasked, along with two others, to solve ten out of fifty cold cases in two months' times. In the meantime he wonders if his last homicide case was accidental death or, well, homicide. The book is excellent--a thoroughly professional job.

In this second book of the Hoke Moseley series, our loser-pants police detective must deal with various sleazoids while figuring out how to raise his two daughters who have been sent back to him because his ex-wife's pro-ball-player novio finds them distracting during his spring training. Sound Familiar? It's not. Funny and amoral, Hoke's counseling sessions with his daughters are not for the timid or politically correct. Lacking the outrageous antagonists of MIAMI BLUES or SIDESWIPE, this is not the strongest book of the series, but it is an essential set-up for the next tale. Buy it.

So often, you come across a series of books of a certain detective or private investigator and there is no character growth. Well, this book brings about a refreshing change in that procedure. In fact, Willeford gives us a whole novel's worth of character study and you wish it would never end. Hoke Moseley is arguably the most realistic, honest, and likable police detective created in this genre. If you are looking for fluff, do not read this. If you are looking for an intelligent, creative, and interesting read, this is the book for you.