A review by jakewritesbooks
The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford
3.0
And so I have come to the end of Charles Willeford’s Hank Moseley series which, while at times was quite entertaining, mostly disappointed me after its great entry (Miami Blues).
As I said in my reviews of the last two books, I expected more cat-and-mouse affairs with Moseley and criminals. I didn’t think this would be a series about a sad sack cop’s private life with some police bureaucracy and a little detective work thrown in. That’s mostly what these books are.
And while I’ve critiqued Moseley’s racism in past reviews, it’s time to stop dancing around it: the dude is a straight up racist. Yeah maybe he’s not bad by the low bar of police department standards but he’s a racist. He’ll have all the respect in the world for non-white individuals but he’s very big into denigrating entire ethnic groups based on stereotypes. Of course, he’s examining these groups through a cop’s eye and the job of the police is to find crime among them, so that’s what he does. It’s a myopic way of viewing the world and, while perhaps honest with the reader as to the sympathies a white detective in 80s Miami would have, it still made me really hate Hoke.
And again, the cases themselves, while interestingly resolved, don’t provide any sort of real suspense. There’s a weird diversion that takes up the second third of the book and, while it has an interesting tie in to the end, kind of left me frustrated. Also, there’s family drama going on with Hoke, Ellita and the girls that sucks too much story line, especially in a somewhat implausible way.
I like Charles Willeford as a writer. I wanted to like the series more. I can’t say I regret reading it…but I wish a different, better version of it existed.
As I said in my reviews of the last two books, I expected more cat-and-mouse affairs with Moseley and criminals. I didn’t think this would be a series about a sad sack cop’s private life with some police bureaucracy and a little detective work thrown in. That’s mostly what these books are.
And while I’ve critiqued Moseley’s racism in past reviews, it’s time to stop dancing around it: the dude is a straight up racist. Yeah maybe he’s not bad by the low bar of police department standards but he’s a racist. He’ll have all the respect in the world for non-white individuals but he’s very big into denigrating entire ethnic groups based on stereotypes. Of course, he’s examining these groups through a cop’s eye and the job of the police is to find crime among them, so that’s what he does. It’s a myopic way of viewing the world and, while perhaps honest with the reader as to the sympathies a white detective in 80s Miami would have, it still made me really hate Hoke.
And again, the cases themselves, while interestingly resolved, don’t provide any sort of real suspense. There’s a weird diversion that takes up the second third of the book and, while it has an interesting tie in to the end, kind of left me frustrated. Also, there’s family drama going on with Hoke, Ellita and the girls that sucks too much story line, especially in a somewhat implausible way.
I like Charles Willeford as a writer. I wanted to like the series more. I can’t say I regret reading it…but I wish a different, better version of it existed.