Way We Die Now [Hardcover]

Charles Willeford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1989

Hoke Moseley, the Miami homicide cop first introduced in "Sideswipe", is posted to the migrant farms of the Florida Everglades, where rumours of slavery and murder are rife. He must deal in turn with vicious criminals, the manipulations of his commander and the unwelcome attention of a con artist. Charles Willeford has also written "Miami Blues".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Detective Hoke Mosely, the protagonist of Willeford's Miami Blues and other novels, returns in this latest mystery set in Miami and nearby Collier County. Hoke is a busy man: his teenage daughters and live-in ex-partner keep his head turning at home; his work on the cold-case file has at last yielded a clue in a physician's murder; and two men from the Caribbean isles have turned up dead in an apartment sprayed by an exterminator. Further, a killer Hoke nabbed 10 years earlier, unexpectedly paroled, has chosen to lease a home facing Hoke's own. That's not all. In the Everglades, Haitian migrant workers are missing and a particularly vicious redneck farmer is suspected of killing them. So Hoke is summoned for special assignment, and then police work really gets interesting. If ever there was a mystery writer who dismissed Alfred Hitchcock's disdain for the "plausibles," it is Willefordhe is meticulous about the details of Hoke's police and personal life. As if to balance his low-key approach and the amassing of mundane minutiae, Willeford draws a shockingly violent, ugly scene in which the redneck's hired man beats Hoke and attempts to rape him. And simmering beneath the surface is Hoke's nearly sociopathological obsession with the racial tensions between the ethnic groups who uneasily co-exist in southern Florida. As usual with Willeford's crime novels, this is an absorbing, often amusing and disturbing read.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Review

The Way We Die Now

"Elegant, tough, and rhythmic as a championship boxing match."

-- San Francisco Chronicle

"No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford."

-- Elmore Leonard --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square; First Edition edition (March 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575042982
• ISBN-13: 978-0575042988
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Willeford is the boss, June 11, 2005

By 

Drummer (Fort Myers, FL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Way We Die Now (Hardcover)

The truth is, all of Florida crime writers after Willeford can type until their fingertips fall off, but Willeford will always remain the boss.

Willeford is the most deadpan writer imaginable. His Hoke Mosely books are totally without affectation or author intrusion, unlike certain other Florida crime writers whom I won't mention.

Willeford such a master, he can tug at your heartstrings without manipulating you like most writers do. _The Way We Die Now_ is no exception. For all of his cynicism, Hoke Moseley loves his kids as best he can, and he always goes out of his way to help the underdog. All of the Moseley novels leave us with a sense that life is worth living in spite of the pain and ugliness.

Also typical in this book is Willeford's refusal to cowtow to political correctness. I'm sure all the affirmative action types were retching with disgust when this book came out. Hilarious!

Willeford's prose style is so unapologetically straight-ahead that there's no point in trying to analyze it. I remember the first time I read a Hoke Moseley novel. I thought, "This guy either has no idea how to write, of he's one of the greatest writers of all time." It's because Willeford knows that the story and the characters rule. We're so accustomed to writers who can't resist showing the reader how clever they are. When a real storyteller comes along, we don't know how to take him.

There's simply nobody else like Willeford.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author and detective in top form, May 7, 2000

By 

Keith Nichols (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Way We Die Now (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For the Aficionados, June 5, 2006

By 

Mick "Shermanator" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way We Die Now (Paperback)

This novel is a last in a series, and established fans who come to get their fix of Hoke Mosley will not be disappointed.

I came to it first and I liked the believable characters and compelling descriptions. But ... not much actually happens.

The undercover assignment is set up, but then as soon as Hoke arrives at the place he blows the guy away and beats his sidekick to death - and that's it! As for the cold case subplot, Hoke achieves a breakthrough by claiming it's solved and panicking the guy - couldn't he have done this any time in the previous three years? Finally, the released revenge-promising con is made to buy a place across the road from Hoke just to rid him of Ellita, as it seems.

And what's this about an Orthodox Jew with his favourite brand of tuna?

I think the book needed a careful editor.