Charles Willeford: Wild Wives / High Priest of California

From the Publisher:
Wild Wives
"She wasn't wearing much beneath the skirt. In an instant it was all over. Fiercely and abruptly."

A classic of Hard-boiled 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, insane young woman who is the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect. Blake becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue and multiple murders in this exciting period tale.

High Priest of California
"She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced."

Russell Haxby is a ruthless used car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of Hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue and lust set in San Francisco in the early fifties. In High Priest of California every sentence masks innuendo, every detail hides a clue, and every used car sale is as outrageous as every seduction.

Charles Willeford: Wild Wives / High Priest of California No Exit Press, ISBN: 1842430033 (January, 2001), 602 p., £7.99