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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISBN: 1842430033
EAN:
Price: £7.99
Casing: Paperback
Format: B (198 x 129mm)
Extent: 288pp
Rights: UK & Commonwealth excl. Canada
Pub. Date: January 2001

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A hobo at age 16, then a decorated WW2 marine, then a teacher of literature, Willeford had two careers as a writer - in the 50's & 60's, with the hardboiled pulp in the style of Jim Thompson and then in the eighties with the four superb Hoke Moseley novels. The first of these - Miami Blues - was made into a film starring William Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Fred Ward, and Woman Chaser is soon to be a major movie starring William Warburton.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"...the master of cynical Florida crime fiction ..." - The Times

"...Better than Hall and Hiaasen and as good as Elmore Leonard at his best ..." - Time Out

"...a crime writers' crime writer lionised by peers such as Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block ... dangerous indeed, with a bitter humour, black as it comes but also so sweet..." - The Herald

"...No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford...." - Elmore Leonard,