Charles Willeford: 15 books

Charles Willeford's legendary lost novel, unavailable since its original publication in 1961. AN UNFORGIVABLE CRIME. AN UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL. Why would a happily married Florida housewife pick up her husband's .22 caliber Colt Woodsman semi-automatic pistol and use it to kill her two...

First published as an unheralded paperback original, Pick-Up is an authentic underground classic, an explosive bulletin from the urban underbelly of mid-1950s America. It was Charles Willeford’s second novel, after a rough and wandering earlier life that had taken him from Depression-era hobo camps...

A classic of hardboiled 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,...

Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley is called to a posh Miami neighborhood to investigate a lethal overdose. There he meets the alluring stepmother of the decedant, and begins to wonder about dating a witness. Meanwile, he has been threatened with suspension by his ambitious new chief unless he...

She was a perfectly nice girl, this Maria Dugan—though possibly a little too attractive for her own good. Craving a vacation that would really furnish thrills and excitement, she decided to treat herself to a couple of weeks in fabled Miami. There she soon learned that the only way to interest a...

When Miami Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering...

From the 50’s to the 60’s, if you were an adult man, you could go to the back of any drugstore and for a quarter or two pick up a paperback “sleazy.” With their garish covers of half-naked women and two-fisted men and amoral, violent tales of sexual conquest and conflict, these paperbacks...

This is not crime or detective pulp, but rather a fictional study of exploitation and moral bankruptcy. An episode in the life of Russell Haxby, auto salesman. The con jobs he perpetrates in business pale in comparison to his personal schemes.  Charles Willeford wrote a number of sleazies and High...

After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly...

Hoke Moseley has had enough. Tired of struggling against alimony payments, two teenage daughters, a very pregnant, very single partner, and a low paying job as a Miami homicide detective, Hoke moves to Singer Island and vows never step foot on the mainland again. But on the street, career criminal...

The dedicated obsession of a fanatical sport.  As in the bullring -- to the death -- it used to be legal in Florida.  Ilegal in the other forty-nine states.  This is the story of one iron-willed man's passion for glory and winning.  

Richard Hudson, woman chaser and used car salesman, has a pimp's awareness of the ways women (and men) are most vulnerable. One day Richard decides to make an ambitious film, which turns into a fiasco. Enraged, he exacts revenge on all who have crossed him.

From the master of Miami noir comes this tale of four regular guys living in a singles apartment building who experience firsthand that there's more than one type of heat in Miami. Larry Dolman is a rather literal minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot...

The cover says:  "A starkly naked novel of sin and segregation."  This is lurid pulp fiction at its best!