Synopses & Reviews
High Priest of California
"She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced."
Russell Haxby is a ruthless used car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of Hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue and lust set in San Francisco in the early fifties. In High Priest of California every sentence masks innuendo, every detail hides a clue, and every used car sale is as outrageous as every seduction.
Wild Wives
"She wasn't wearing much beneath the skirt. In an instant it was all over. Fiercely and abruptly."
A classic of Hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford's Wild Wives is amoral, sexy and brutal. Written in a sleazy San Francisco hotel in the early 1950's while on leave from the army, Willeford creates a tale of deception featuring the crooked detective Jacob C. Blake and his nemesis a beautiful, insane young woman who is the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect. Blake becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue and multiple murders in this exciting period tale.
Review
"Charles Willeford was a poet and a soldier who wrote very strange books and never received the recognition he deserved until he began a police series featuring toothless detective Hoke Moseley. Then he died. Such is the lot of the pulp fiction novelist. This two-for-one volume features a pair of enjoyable novels from the mid-50's. One is about a sociopath who preys on vulnerable women, the other features a sleazy PI who gets his come-uppance from a wayward wife. Just my style. Classic noir, classic pulp, plus the script of a play adapted from the former, and a partial bibliography. What a bargain!" Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday
Review
"The Pope of Psycho-Pulp" Time Out, London