Charles Willeford

Page Updated: 09/09/02

Page 1

Page 2

Charles Willeford - Page 1

High Priest of California

The Shark-Infested Custard

The Machine in Ward Eleven

The Way We Die Now

The Woman Chaser

by Charles Willeford

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - No Exit Press (2001)

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.
'The hairiest, ballsiest, hard-boiled ever penned. One continuous orgy of prolonged foreplay!' Dennis McMillan
'The prose is clean and tough and flows easily' The New York Times Book Review
'Willeford, writing with quiet authority, has the ability to make his situations, scenes, dialogue, sound absolutely real' Elmore Leonard

Paperback - Canongate Crime (2000)

The Shark-Infested Custard
They are just four regular guys by the pool: ex-cop Larry ‘Fuzz-0' Dolman, airline pilot Eddie Miller, salesman Don Luchessi and drug company rep Hank Norton. They live in a 'singles only’ Miami apartment block. They like regular-guy things: booze, broads, cars, and a good card game.
The Shark-infested Custard is a startlingly amoral update of Dumas' The Three Musketeers set in 1970's Miami. As our four male swingers commit increasingly barbarous crimes it becomes clear that their only guiding principle is not to get caught - by adhering to the 'all for one, one for all' maxim.
Willeford joyfully applies the scalpel to the vacuous heart of male America, where being one of the guys is always going to be more important than mere life and death.

Paperback - No Exit Press (2001)

The Machine in Ward Eleven

"I had a hunch that madness was a predominant theme and normal condition for Americans living in the second half of the century" Charles Willeford

The re-issue of Willeford’s 1963 paranoia pulp classic The Machine in Ward Eleven features six incisive tales as fresh as the day they were first published. These stories are a timely reminder that madness is truly the dark heart of 21st century politics. Written at a time when we still had some faith in our elected leaders Willeford laid bare the American Dream. Events over the last 30 odd years have stripped away the hype and pomp but Willeford was there first. There is an almost Chekhovian wistfulness in the treatment of his stories which belies their considerable impact. Don’t make the mistake of consigning this to some sort of historical context: Willeford is as chilling and relevant as ever.
"The weirdest tale that has been published in America since Edgar Allen Poe" SF Quarterly
‘The Pope of Psycho-Pulp’ Time Out

Paperback - No Exit Press (2001)

The Way We Die Now
See Review by John Baker

'Charles Willeford was a true original and in the four Hoke Moseley novels produced a small body of work which will stand the test of time. Like Eddie Bunker, Willeford was an old guy who had lived a life and was now reaping the rewards. A hobo at the age of 16, then a decorated marine, then a teacher of literature in Miami, Willeford also had two careers as a writer. His earlier novels in the 50s and 60: were hard boiled pulp, very downbeat and bleak in the style of Jim Thompson. No Exit publish three of these in the Charles Willeford Omnibus and Pick Up is probably the most depressing novel you will ever read. Then after his break, when he was presumably teaching and lost interest in writing, he suddenly produced the wonderful character of Hoke Moseley, Four books in four years, each one a classic and all slightly different in style. The novels are full of dry humour and have bizarre scenes which stay in the mind for ever. The Hoke Moseley novels are simply up there, way above and beyond most crime writer's wet dreams.' Jerry Raine, manager of Murder One and author of Smalltime.

Paperback - No Exit Press (2001)

The Woman Chaser
The psycho-pulp classic - Now a major movie starring Patrick Warburton
He got reality mixed up with a dream. A bad dream
Richard Hudson, an inveterate woman-chaser and gifted used car salesman, possesses a pimp's understanding of the ways in which women (and men) are most vulnerable - and justifies his seductions with a highly perverse logic. By day, he works his crooked car lot with much success. By night, he returns home to a family of misfits: an adoring, ageless mother; her washed-up husband, an ex-film director who is twenty years her junior; and a curious teenage stepsister ripe for corruption.
One day Richard is seized by a feeling of terror and revulsion; he realises he's wasting his life in the meaningless pursuit of money. His only hope, he decides, is to abandon the used-car game and try his hand at something creative - an ambitious and risk-laden film project that will "tie up in a single package his reason for existing". The fact that he has no experience in the arts means little to Richard. "Experts" are enlisted, and like a ringleader engineering a crime, he moves forward with a volatile and unyielding energy.
Richard completes his cherished project. But forces beyond his control swiftly reject and destroy it. As a result, the enraged and humiliated used-car salesman goes on a bender for the ages drinking his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and exacting a monstrous revenge on all who have crossed him.
‘Darkly funny throughout, Willeford deploys a dreamy causality all his own, simultaneously creepy and chirpy' Sunday Times
‘A pitilessly hilarious dissection of the American male psyche’ The Chicago Tribune
‘The most eloquently brainy and exacting pulp-fiction ever fabricated!’ Village Voice

About The Author
Born January 2, 1919, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Charles Willeford spent most of his formative years in boarding schools and with his grandmother, who took him in when he was eight. But he left in his early teens when it became clear to him that she couldn’t support them both and became a hobo and drifter. At sixteen he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was subsequently stationed in the Philippines, a random act that became a twenty-year career. WWII found him in the cavalry as a tank commander with the 10th Armoured Division in Europe, resulting in a clutch of medals (Silver Star, Bronze Star, a couple of Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre), shrapnel wounds and a wealth of human xperience that he later drew on for his novels:
"A good half of the men you deal with in the Army are psychopaths. There’s a pretty hefty overlap between the military population and the prison population, so I knew plenty of guys like Junior in Miami Blues and Troy in Sideswipe."
Willeford started writing High Priest of California in 1949 while working at the Hamilton Air Force base, finally seeing it published in 1953, but despite producing Woman Chaser, Cockfighter, Machine In Ward Eleven, Burnt Orange Heresy and other works, widespread recognition for his work didn’t arrive until the publication of Miami Blues, the first of the Hoke Mosley novels, in 1984. By that time he had left the army gained a Masters degree in literature, and taught literature at Miami University. There was pressure on him to follow up his success with Miami Blues by producing a rapid sequel, but his response was to write Grimhaven, in which Hoke Mosley kills his daughters and hides their bodies in the shower of his rundown hotel room. Needless to say the book didn’t make it into print at that time.
Willeford died in 1988, having written 16 novels, some collections of poetry and two autobiographical works, Something About A Soldier and I Was Looking For A Street, a body of work that has become increasingly appreciated by crime and fiction readers. Miami Blues - was made into a film starring William Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Fred Ward and more recently The Woman Chaser was filmed by Robinson Devor and was premiered in the UK at the Crime Scene festival at the NFT in July.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

High Priest of California No Exit Press Pbk Feb 01

The Shark-Infested Custard Canongate Crime Pbk Oct 00

Something About A Soldier

Cockfighter

The Burnt Orange Heresy

The Director

No Experience Necessary

The Black Mass Of Brother Springer

Pick-Up

Proletarian Laughter

The Machine in Ward Eleven No Exit Press Pbk Jul 01

The Way We Die Now (No Exit Press) No Exit Press Pbk Dec 01 (Hoke Moseley)

The Woman Chaser (Carroll & Graf) No Exit Press Pbk Jan 01

New Hope for the Dead (No Exit Press) No Exit Press Pbk Jan 01 (Hoke Moseley)

Miami Blues (No Exit Press) No Exit Press Pbk Jan 01 (Hoke Moseley)

Sideswipe (No Exit Press) No Exit Press Pbk Dec 01 (Hoke Moseley)

Wild Wives No Exit Press Pbk Feb 01

A Charles Willeford Omnibus (No Exit Press Pbk) (Hoke Moseley)