Sideswipe by Charles Willeford Review

Detective-Sergeant Hoke Moseley suffers a mental breakdown, quits the Miami PD and heads to remote Singer Island to recuperate at his dad’s house and try his hand at a new, seemingly less-stressful career as a property manager. Meanwhile, retiree Stanley Sinkiewicz accidentally gets himself thrown in jail where he meets charismatic psychopath Troy Louden who ropes him into his web of crime and moider…

Charles Willeford’s Sideswipe is a journey. A very, very slow-burning journey where you wait and you wait and you wait for the two storylines to sync up, as you know they inevitably will - Hoke’s a cop, Troy’s a robber - but it takes the entire length of the novel until they do and then things are quickly wrapped up in the last 25 pages or so! I still say it was a worthwhile journey to take though.

Hoke’s storyline is definitely the least interesting out of two not particularly interesting storylines - at least to start with. He has his breakdown - which I’m sure is realistic; PTSD/mental breakdowns probably do come out of the blue and strike hard - then goes to convalesce at his dad’s place and begin his new life. But nothing that exciting happens at Singer Island.

At some point he helps solve the case of the burglaries at his dad’s wife’s apartment complex (considering she’s nearly his age, “stepmother” is a stretch), otherwise he’s doing diddly-squat for almost the entire novel. Still, as easy to put down as the novel was, it’s a credit to Willeford’s writing ability that I never considered abandoning it because the chapters always contained moments of uniquely surprising oddity and amusement.

Like the fact that Hoke decides, to simplify his life more, he’ll buy a pair of yellow poplin jumpsuits to wear - to cut down on the laundry, of course! Just the image alone of this maniac going about his days wearing yellow jumpsuits made me smile. And then later on his teenage daughter Aileen comes to stay with him - yeah, he just abandons his two daughters in Miami with his preggo partner, because that’s what you did in the ‘80s - and he finds out she’s bulimic but he doesn’t know what that means so he freaks out and sends her packing on a red eye to California where “the nuns'' will straighten her out (and amazingly they do!).

It’s just unexpectedly funny like that. And Hoke comes across some odd tenants like academic Itai (named after the Japanese word for “hurt”) who’s meant to be writing a novel but is really fascinated with horseflies.

The best part of the novel is when Troy is introduced after a similarly absurd episode lands hapless Stanley in the slammer temporarily. Willeford writes charismatic psychos superbly, like he did in Miami Blues, and Sideswipe is no exception. Troy’s charming and you can see why Stanley valued him so quickly as a friend, but he’s also very unpredictable and extremely violent at times. He’s a very compelling character to read about.

I liked how each time Stanley would meet Troy he would get dragged further and further into his dark criminal lifestyle but also didn’t mind it because they genuinely get along and retirement was clearly boring to Stanley. The novel became more engrossing the more Stanley stayed in Troy’s world and the supermarket heist is a helluva exciting chapter.

While the way Willeford wrote about Hoke’s PTSD at the start seemed realistic, Hoke just happens to snap out of it when he’s needed back in Miami to help catch Troy - is that realistic? I honestly don’t know but it seems a little convenient from a narrative perspective. One minute he can’t move out of his chair and is practically catatonic, the next he’s back to his old self, running a complex investigation. Hmm.

Sideswipe wasn’t as good as Miami Blues - which is seeming more and more a one-off firecracker of a book - but if you don't mind a very slow narrative/you’re a very patient reader, it’s worth checking out. Basically Sideswipe is a Willeford fans-only read.