Sergeant Hoke Moseley is still on the cold cases, this time investigating the suspicious death of a local doctor, thinking his two partners might’ve had him offed. And then he’s approached by his boss for an unexpected undercover mission outside his Miami jurisdiction to investigate a shady farmer in the small town of Immokalee where a number of Haitian workers have gone missing after working at his farm. Meanwhile, a murderer he put away years ago, who promised to fix Hoke’s wagon if he ever got out, has been let out early on a technicality and has moved into the house across from Hoke’s…
The Way We Die Now is the last Hoke Moseley book because it was Charles Willeford’s last book - he died the same year it was published, 1988. It’s a shame he didn’t get around to writing this series until the last years of his life because I’d’ve loved more Hoke novels and, the way he leaves things here, there definitely was room for more. But at least he wrote four of them and, while not the best of the bunch (that would be Miami Blues, the first book), The Way We Die Now is about as good as the others, which is to say it’s ok but has its flaws.
My summary makes it seem like there’s a lot happening in this fairly slender novel but it reads surprisingly padded and slow-moving. What annoys me the most about Willeford’s writing style is the overly-descriptive nature of it. So much of the book is full of pointless descriptions of rooms, scenery, etc. that have no impact on the narrative. Like when Hoke’s in Noseworthy’s Guesthouse, we can’t just have Hoke enter a room, we’ve got to read about how that room is decorated, the material of the floor, curtains, the pattern of the wallpaper, and so on. Ugh, it’s just so boring!
There are also a lot of scenes that are similarly needless. Instead of having Hoke blend into the Immokalee community and skip to the part where he meets the crooked farmer, Tiny Bock, we have to hear about him eating lunch in a diner, then working there for a bit, then going home with some trailer trash, then spending the night in the trailer, then going to the farmer’s market, then meeting Tiny Bock. Or Hoke going to Ellita’s dying uncle’s party, or all that crap about the no smoking indoors policy at the station. Snore.
They make the story frustratingly slow but not wholly unpleasant because Willeford is a fine writer and manages to make even superfluous scenes like these not seem like a complete waste of time. He brings to life the character of the Immokalee community and the kind of lives the people live there experience. It’s just a personal preference that I wanted to see a more tightly-focused story than what was Willeford’s own brand of storytelling.
And when he gets going, it’s really good. What goes down at Bock’s farm is exciting and I particularly loved that Hoke pauses to milk a goat! It’s such a funny detail. It’s in keeping with the character and Willeford’s approach to crime fiction - in the first book, when Hoke catches up with the serial killer and you think you’re going to get a chase/gunfight, Hoke instead lets the killer escape, then goes and gets a coffee and sandwich to plan his next move. I like the unanticipated and original way Willeford handles action scenes.
The cold case doctor murder is a decent storyline but the ex-con who swore revenge on Hoke takes a really weird and not wholly convincing left turn towards the end, although I expect, had Willeford lived to write another one, that incongruity would’ve been further explored.
If you’re only after the creme de la creme of the Hoke Moseley series, just read the first novel, Miami Blues, but none of the four books are that bad, so long as you’re a patient reader who doesn’t mind reading long-winded passages of useless description. I didn’t love The Way We Die Now but it’s not a bad crime novel either that has its moments and is worth checking out if you’re a fan of the genre.
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