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.

Independent On Sunday Review
Mark Timlin

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!

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

High Priest of California

"The hairiest, ballsiest, hard-boiled ever penned. One continuous orgy of prolonged foreplay!" -Dennis McMillan

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

'The Pope of Psycho-Pulp' - Time Out

'the master of cynical Florida crime fiction' - The Times

'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

'the master of cynical Florida crime fiction' - The Times

'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

ESSENTIAL TRIVIA

Willeford's wartime career saw him serving as a tank commander in the U.S. army, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and being awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart.
He said of his fellow soldiers - "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..."