Miami Blues

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 doesnt 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.

"Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new." Donald E. Westlake

"Extraordinarily winning....Pure pleasure....Mr. Willeford never puts a foot wrong." The New Yorker

"Bone-deep satire...terrific." Publishers Weekly

"A tempo so relentless, words practically fly off the page." The Village Voice

"A Graham Greene-like entertainment, but tougher and funnier, softened by neither simile nor sentiment. This is probably as close to the real now Miami as any thriller is likely to come." Donald Justice

"Nobody writes like Charles Willeford...he is an original — funny and weird and wonderful." James Crumley

"A nasty crime-comedy that's full of casual violence, outrageous coincidences, and hilariously rude dialogue....Willeford has a marvelously deadpan way with losers on both sides of the law." Kirkus Reviews

"The prose is clean and tough and flows easily." The New York Times Book Review

"Terse, scary, and evocative, Miami Blues is a thriller with cold blood....Snap up Miami Blues." The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A marvelous read. Do yourself a favor and go buy Miami Blues immediately." Harry Crews

Beware of the cop. He bites.

Hoke Moseley never saw him coming: the person who crashed into his squalid little hidey-hole in the Eldorado Hotel. When his assailant was was done, Hoke's pride and joy, his dentures, were gone. So were his gun and his badge.

Recovering from the brutal beating, Hoke tried to figure out who had administered it. The one place he didn't look was at a pair of ill-suited lovers: an ex-con from California and a simpleminded whore was was studying business management at Miami-Dade college.

What the two had in common was a demented interest in haiku, a Hare Krishna who died of a broken finger at a Miami airport, and the acquaintance of a cop without any teeth: the very cop who, as soon as he remembers, will hunt them down. All the way down.

Charles Willeford was a highly decorated (Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Luxembourg Croix de Guerre) tank commander with the Third Army in World War II. He was also a professional horse trainer, boxer, radio announcer, and painter. Willeford, the author of twenty novels, created the Miami detective series featuring Hoke Moseley, which includes Miami Blues, Sideswipe, The Way We Die Now, and New Hope for the Dead. He died in 1988.