Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (1984)

Frederick J. Frenger, Jr, a blithe psychopath from California, asked the flight attendant in first class for another glass of champagne and some writing materials.

Willeford wrote pulp noir books throughout an eventful life (including time as a hobo and a tank commander) but he didn’t make his rep till he was in his Sixties, with four books about put-upon cop with bad teeth, Hoke Moseley. They’re not police procedurals though, more like westerns. This was the first.  

Freddie in ‘Miami Blues’ is one of fiction’s great outlaws, a psycho fresh from prison who flies into Miami with no idea but to go on a spree till he’s caught again. In chapter one he kills a Hare Krishna for hassling him at the airport, and this pointless murder sets Hoke on his trail – well kind of… the plot meanders all over the place. But it’s great fun to follow these two who are haphazardly locked together – the cop who’s hemmed in by the rules and the psycho who doesn’t have any.

The deadly, if oddly guileless, Freddie, his hick girlfriend Susan, and the unlucky Hoke are all outsiders, and make great guides to the city. Willeford has a killer way with detail and absurdity, and an anthropologist’s acute eye for Miami’s urban tribes, be they Cuban refugees or genteel retirees.

Lots of crime fiction gets set in Miami – maybe cause it’s so tacky and over-the-top – but for my money this is the best. Willeford deserves his increasing fame, shame he’s dead. Still, nice to see a guy doing his best work in his Sixties, means there’s hope for us all.