Pun Salad

At some point in the past, for reasons that I don't recollect, I stuck this book on my "Things to Check Out" list at WorldCat.org. The Portsmouth (NH) Public Library doesn't own any books at all by the author, Charles Willeford, but the UNH Library had a copy from back in the days it doubled as Durham's town library. And so…

I didn't really know what to expect. Caveat Lector: it's very violent (eventually), one early scene is guaranteed to never, ever, appear in a movie as is. And there are long stretches where not much happens that's relevant to the main plot. It's easy reading though, with a hefty amount of very dark humor.

It's part of Willeford's "Hoke Moseley" series, number 3 of 4. Moseley is a Miami cop, but as the book opens, he's a pants-peeing basket case, burned out, unable to return to work at his current assignment of investigating cold cases. His wife has left him, he's got a rocky relationship with his daughters. He decamps for Singer Island, where his father lives, and as he recovers from his burnout, resolves to spend the rest of his life there, somehow.

In a parallel plot thread, oldster Stanley Sinkiewicz, retired auto worker, gets jailed due to that scene I mentioned above. There he meets Troy Louden, a self-described criminal psychopath. But Stanley's not one to judge. (Although that would have been a good idea.) Troy and Stanley develop a (um) complex relationship, and Stanley gets roped into Troy's next caper, a supermarket heist that will put them on Easy Street. Albeit, in Haiti. But that's the plan, anyway.

Other characters pop up along the way: an ex-stripper/prostitute with a ruined face, an aspiring artist from Barbados, various tenants at the apartment building that Moseley starts managing for his father. Nobody is particularly admirable, not even Moseley. But interesting and colorful; I'll give them that.