I usually don't like jumping into a series of books in the
middle,
much less at the end, but it doesn't seem to make a
difference with
this. I do plan on reading the rest in as close to
chronological
order as I can manage, though.
Constantine, whoever he or she is - it's a pseudonym - has a
hell of
an ear for dialogue. It's some of the best I've read, up
there with
modern masters like George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard
before he
got really famous. There's isn't much of a mystery in the
book, just
something that happens in secret and gets sorted out, but I
assume the
earlier ones have a murder or something that gets
solved.
Not exactly a review, but a pointer in case other people
haven't heard
of Constantine. Worth checking out.
A couple of months ago, I got a copy of the manuscript
to
_Grimhaven_, the second and unpublished Hoke Mosely novel by
Charles
Willeford. I can't tell you where I got it, so don't ask, and
I won't
make copies. (I had to promise that when I bought it.)
In case you don't know the story, Willeford wrote _Miami
Blues_, and
his publishers wanted another book with the same cop
character.
Willeford didn't want to get into a series, so he wrote
this
incredibly depressing sequel, where Mosely kills his two
daughters and
attempts to kill his ex-wife's boyfriend, then sits and waits
for the
police to arrive. It's Willeford all the way, with
digressions into
the running of a hardware store and other topics, precise
analysis of
how much things cost, and all the rest.
Now, the book is very bleak, nihilistic and depressing.
Setting that
aside, I have to say I didn't like the Hoke in this book. Not
just
because he kills his daughters - I didn't like him *before*
that; in
the other books I did like him. He's usually the kind of a
guy who
makes do with what he has, and suffers all the junk that gets
dropped
on him, but here he's different. When his daughters show up,
he tells
them they can't continue on in school, they need to get jobs
to bring
in money (he makes next to nothing working in his father's
store).
One daughter has some orthodontic work left in her mouth, so
he gets a
neighbour to yank it out. He's mean about how much spending
money he
lets them have. I knew what was coming later, but all this
earlier on
made me think Hoke had turned into a real knob.
He kills his daughters because they've upset his schedule and
his
regimented life, and he looks forward to sitting in a jail
cell all by
himself. He's amoral, he's a sociopath ... but the thing that
I
remember most about the book is that he's a jerk.
Again, not much of a review, but for some reason that's what
stuck in
my head.
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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