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Wild Wives
Jake Blake is a private detective short on cash when he meets a rich and beautiful young woman looking to escape her father’s smothering influence. Unfortunately for Jake, the smothering influence includes two thugs hired to protect her—and the woman is in fact not the daughter of the man she wants to escape, but his wife. Now Jake has two angry thugs and one jealous husband on his case. As Jake becomes more deeply involved with this glamorous and possibly crazy woman, he becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue—and multiple murders. Brilliant, sardonic, and full of surprises, Wild Wives is one wild ride.
102 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
53 people are currently reading
423 people want to read
About the author
Charles Willeford
85 books426 followersCharles Willeford was a remarkably fine, talented and prolific writer who wrote everything from poetry to crime fiction to literary criticism throughout the course of his impressively long and diverse career. His crime novels are distinguished by a mean'n'lean sense of narrative economy and an admirable dearth of sentimentality. He was born as Charles Ray Willeford III on January 2, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Willeford's parents both died of tuberculosis when he was a little boy and he subsequently lived either with his grandmother or at boarding schools. Charles became a hobo in his early teens. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age sixteen and was stationed in the Philippines. Willeford served as a tank commander with the 10th Armored Division in Europe during World War II. He won several medals for his military service: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre. Charles retired from the army as a Master Sergeant. Willeford's first novel "High Priest of California" was published in 1953. This solid debut was followed by such equally excellent novels as "Pick-Up" (this book won a Beacon Fiction Award), "Wild Wives," "The Woman Chaser," "Cockfighter" (this particular book won the Mark Twain Award), and "The Burnt Orange Heresy." Charles achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with four outstanding novels about hapless Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley: "Miami Blues," "New Hope for the Dead," "Sideswipe," and "The Way We Die Now." Outside of his novels, he also wrote the short story anthology "The Machine in Ward Eleven," the poetry collections "The Outcast Poets" and "Proletarian Laughter," and the nonfiction book "Something About A Soldier." Willeford attended both Palm Beach Junior College and the University of Miami. He taught a course in humanities at the University of Miami and was an associate professor who taught classes in both philosophy and English at Miami Dade Junior College. Charles was married three times and was an associate editor for "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine." Three of Willeford's novels have been adapted into movies: Monte Hellman delivered a bleakly fascinating character study with "Cockfighter" (Charles wrote the script and has a sizable supporting role as the referee of a cockfighting tournament which climaxes the picture), George Armitage hit one out of the ballpark with the wonderfully quirky "Miami Blues," and Robinson Devor scored a bull's eye with the offbeat "The Woman Chaser." Charles popped up in a small part as a bartender in the fun redneck car chase romp "Thunder and Lightning." Charles Willeford died of a heart attack at age 69 on March 27, 1988.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 97 reviews
August 7, 2016
Wild Wives begins with a beautiful, young femme fatale walking into a private detective's office. Sound familiar? Yep, it's a well-used, ordinary convention in hard-boiled detective fiction. But writer Charles Willeford is anything but ordinary. As he did in the last Willeford book I read, Pick-up, he turns the genre on it's head. In the first two pages of Wild Wives, we realize that the femme fatale is a 16-year-old girl, who shoots the detective with a water pistol, bends over his desk, and proceeds to ask him for a spanking.
Thus begins this bizarre, sleazy little hard-boiled novella that has a hefty dose of sex and violence, not to mention a fitting title!
Thus begins this bizarre, sleazy little hard-boiled novella that has a hefty dose of sex and violence, not to mention a fitting title!
February 3, 2023
It feels like Willeford banged this out under a tight deadline. On the plus side, there's hardly a dull moment.
April 8, 2015
First published in 1956, Wild Wives is a short but very entertaining novel from Charles Willeford, the author of Miami Blues and a number of other crime novels.
Jake Blake is a struggling San Francisco P.I. who lives in the same cheap hotel where he has his office. One slow afternoon, Florence Weintraub, the inevitable Hot Babe essential to the beginning of practically any classic P.I. story, waltzes into his office insisting that she's desperately in need of his help. Even though she's twenty-six years old, her father allows her absolutely no freedom whatsoever and has her accompanied wherever she goes by two goons who are allegedly there to protect her. She'd just like a couple of hours to herself, she says. Could Jake possibly help her lose the two thugs?
Well, of course he can, for twenty-five bucks a day plus expenses. And when the lovely Florence agrees to the terms, one thing inevitably leads to another. Florence is very attracted to Jake and once they finally elude her guardians, they go out to dinner, which Jake naturally adds to the expense account. Other more interesting activities accompany the dinner, and Florence insists that she'd like to see Jake again the following day.
Complications ensue and poor Jake soon finds himself entangled in a mess he never envisioned when he accepted Florence's seemingly simple assignment. It's an engaging story with plenty of Willeford's deadpan humor and enough action to propel the story forward at a fairly rapid clip. While not quite on a par with some of Willeford's better known books, it's still a fun read and will appeal especially to those who have read and enjoyed the author's other work.
Jake Blake is a struggling San Francisco P.I. who lives in the same cheap hotel where he has his office. One slow afternoon, Florence Weintraub, the inevitable Hot Babe essential to the beginning of practically any classic P.I. story, waltzes into his office insisting that she's desperately in need of his help. Even though she's twenty-six years old, her father allows her absolutely no freedom whatsoever and has her accompanied wherever she goes by two goons who are allegedly there to protect her. She'd just like a couple of hours to herself, she says. Could Jake possibly help her lose the two thugs?
Well, of course he can, for twenty-five bucks a day plus expenses. And when the lovely Florence agrees to the terms, one thing inevitably leads to another. Florence is very attracted to Jake and once they finally elude her guardians, they go out to dinner, which Jake naturally adds to the expense account. Other more interesting activities accompany the dinner, and Florence insists that she'd like to see Jake again the following day.
Complications ensue and poor Jake soon finds himself entangled in a mess he never envisioned when he accepted Florence's seemingly simple assignment. It's an engaging story with plenty of Willeford's deadpan humor and enough action to propel the story forward at a fairly rapid clip. While not quite on a par with some of Willeford's better known books, it's still a fun read and will appeal especially to those who have read and enjoyed the author's other work.
May 7, 2023
05/2020
2020:
From 1953
Gritty and graphic, violent Pulp Novella. Great action suspense, especially as it goes on. I love all this, but there are such interesting character details, such strange entertaining sequences. This made it stand out. The scenes in Vegas, the wedding chapel, are funny and fun. And the almost appropriate encounters with the fifteen year old girl are unusual, not exactly genre cliche.
Back in like 2010 I found a cache of his older books at a used booksale. Like someone had collected them and then died (they are mostly 1980s reprints). Sorry to be so morbid, but if you collected five of his books, why would you knowingly donate them to a charity booksale? At least I got them. This is why I'd read so many of his books before the Hoke Mosley series.
2014:
Another totally fun and satisfying 50s noir. This is the fourth Willeford I've read, and I'm very into him now.
2020:
From 1953
Gritty and graphic, violent Pulp Novella. Great action suspense, especially as it goes on. I love all this, but there are such interesting character details, such strange entertaining sequences. This made it stand out. The scenes in Vegas, the wedding chapel, are funny and fun. And the almost appropriate encounters with the fifteen year old girl are unusual, not exactly genre cliche.
Back in like 2010 I found a cache of his older books at a used booksale. Like someone had collected them and then died (they are mostly 1980s reprints). Sorry to be so morbid, but if you collected five of his books, why would you knowingly donate them to a charity booksale? At least I got them. This is why I'd read so many of his books before the Hoke Mosley series.
2014:
Another totally fun and satisfying 50s noir. This is the fourth Willeford I've read, and I'm very into him now.
May 30, 2025
Willeford’s “Wild Wives” is funky offbeat fairly short private eye novel set in San Francisco. Jacob C. Blake (or Jake Blake if you go for rhyming names) has a small office in the mezzanine of the King Edward Hotel, which he acknowledges is the worst location for an private investigator, but he lived in the hotel so it was convenient and it was cheap. “It wasn’t much of an office. The four walls were painted a sickly lime-green, and the only bright spot in the room was the famous Marilyn Monroe calendar with its flame-red background.” It opens with a humorous scene with fifteen-year-old Barbara Ann pointing a realistically-looking water pistol in Blake’s face. Later, he would run into trouble when he gives the young girl an imaginary assignment to catch shoplifters and she follows through with it and he gets caught in the middle of her older brother’s assignation with an older gay man in the hotel and has to beat the hell out of jealous Freddie to escape unscathed.
But thee central story in this short novel is Florence Weintraub, who introduces herself to Blake in a flat toneless voice expecting him to fully know who she is and claiming that her father has sent to two goons to follow her around and she wants help ditching them. Blake just does that, in between manuevering dear Florence onto hidden ballroom balconies where he does unspeakable things to her, never realizing that Mr. Weintraub is not daddy, but her husband, and that Florence is straight out cuckoo for coca-puffs and was just released from an institution.
The comical story takes a nasty turn when Blake, defending himself against crazy Florence, manages to knock out her husband in what appears to be a permanent manner. Realizing that he could never explain to the police why he killed Florence’s husband in between fornicating with her every chance he got, the two crazy kids flee San Francisco with no apparent plan except to collect the thousands of dollars Florence promises she has secreted away in hotel safes from Las Vegas to Mexico City. However, when it comes time to collect, she takes on another personality and fails to remember about the money.
Blake realizes full-on that the dame is straight up crazy-town, but what can he do since he is on the run for her husband’s murder and she is the only one who can testify against him. Naturally, he marries her in a quickie Las Vegas wedding without even Elvis witnessing. He now knows he was “played for a sucker” and Florence had what she wanted and were both equally guilty under the law.
Willeford delivers in this short novel on a fast-paced exciting story that certainly does not take itself too seriously and is almost a farce of a private eye novel, paying homage perhaps to Philip Marlowe who too had his office in San Francisco.
But thee central story in this short novel is Florence Weintraub, who introduces herself to Blake in a flat toneless voice expecting him to fully know who she is and claiming that her father has sent to two goons to follow her around and she wants help ditching them. Blake just does that, in between manuevering dear Florence onto hidden ballroom balconies where he does unspeakable things to her, never realizing that Mr. Weintraub is not daddy, but her husband, and that Florence is straight out cuckoo for coca-puffs and was just released from an institution.
The comical story takes a nasty turn when Blake, defending himself against crazy Florence, manages to knock out her husband in what appears to be a permanent manner. Realizing that he could never explain to the police why he killed Florence’s husband in between fornicating with her every chance he got, the two crazy kids flee San Francisco with no apparent plan except to collect the thousands of dollars Florence promises she has secreted away in hotel safes from Las Vegas to Mexico City. However, when it comes time to collect, she takes on another personality and fails to remember about the money.
Blake realizes full-on that the dame is straight up crazy-town, but what can he do since he is on the run for her husband’s murder and she is the only one who can testify against him. Naturally, he marries her in a quickie Las Vegas wedding without even Elvis witnessing. He now knows he was “played for a sucker” and Florence had what she wanted and were both equally guilty under the law.
Willeford delivers in this short novel on a fast-paced exciting story that certainly does not take itself too seriously and is almost a farce of a private eye novel, paying homage perhaps to Philip Marlowe who too had his office in San Francisco.
August 8, 2022
An early Charles Willeford I found in a used bookstore, and all the early ones are pulpy noir experiments that seem initially like trashy Dashiell Hammett knockoffs--and they mostly are--though in the end he tries to disrupt your expectations, make you see he knows just what he is doing. Jake Blake might be the name of a slick Hollywood detective, but he’s really just another part of what Tony Hillerman calls Willeford’s “asocial trash” in a back cover blurb. There are no good guys or gals with conscience in these books.
So Wild Wives, a novella coming in at around 100 pages, from the title and cover you expect will be a drunken orgy of a tale where everything goes wrong, and you are not that far from the mark, though since it is 1956 it is not that explicit, and thus not quite so wild.
Jake is living in a cheap hotel where his crummy office is also located:
“Behind me was my single window with its excellent view of the airshaft.”
A hot dame (required for any pulpy noir) named Florence walks into his office wanting to get two bodyguards off her trail for a couple hours. Her Daddy thinks she is bad and gives her no room to breathe. Blake knows what to do with those two hours with her:
“She wasn’t the type who is hard to get; she was anxious to get!”
Haw! And yeah, so much of the early parts of the book seem played for cheap laughs, but then we
meet Flo’s gay brother Freddy, and violence ensues, so we firmly establish our Jake is a (homophobic) snake. And then when Flo’s Daddy confronts Blake we find he is not actually her Daddy. . . but her husband. Oops! And Daddy falls down, goes boom, we are on the run, the road to ruin. Turns out Flo just got out of a mental hospital and is a little. . . unbalanced still. Example: If Flo tells you to turn off the radio, you turn off the radio, bud! Or she takes off her high heel and smashes it to bits!
She drives them 100 miles-an-hour across the desert so they can get married in a pretty funny Vegas “wedding” at a cheap motel. Flo says she has plenty of cash stashed in various places from her rich hubby, including Vegas, so they want to get to Mexico and start a new life together, the sweet couple. Love! You can't beat it! And things not surprisingly go south for the young sleazeballs, though not quite in the way you expect.
This is not Hammett or Chandler; this is quick pulpy gutter trash written with a sardonic poison pen, in the manner of Willeford’s own Pick Up, Cockfighter, or The High Priest of California, before he figured out how to make some real money in Hollywood with his funny schleppy Detective Hoke novels and the films that followed.
So Wild Wives, a novella coming in at around 100 pages, from the title and cover you expect will be a drunken orgy of a tale where everything goes wrong, and you are not that far from the mark, though since it is 1956 it is not that explicit, and thus not quite so wild.
Jake is living in a cheap hotel where his crummy office is also located:
“Behind me was my single window with its excellent view of the airshaft.”
A hot dame (required for any pulpy noir) named Florence walks into his office wanting to get two bodyguards off her trail for a couple hours. Her Daddy thinks she is bad and gives her no room to breathe. Blake knows what to do with those two hours with her:
“She wasn’t the type who is hard to get; she was anxious to get!”
Haw! And yeah, so much of the early parts of the book seem played for cheap laughs, but then we
meet Flo’s gay brother Freddy, and violence ensues, so we firmly establish our Jake is a (homophobic) snake. And then when Flo’s Daddy confronts Blake we find he is not actually her Daddy. . . but her husband. Oops! And Daddy falls down, goes boom, we are on the run, the road to ruin. Turns out Flo just got out of a mental hospital and is a little. . . unbalanced still. Example: If Flo tells you to turn off the radio, you turn off the radio, bud! Or she takes off her high heel and smashes it to bits!
She drives them 100 miles-an-hour across the desert so they can get married in a pretty funny Vegas “wedding” at a cheap motel. Flo says she has plenty of cash stashed in various places from her rich hubby, including Vegas, so they want to get to Mexico and start a new life together, the sweet couple. Love! You can't beat it! And things not surprisingly go south for the young sleazeballs, though not quite in the way you expect.
This is not Hammett or Chandler; this is quick pulpy gutter trash written with a sardonic poison pen, in the manner of Willeford’s own Pick Up, Cockfighter, or The High Priest of California, before he figured out how to make some real money in Hollywood with his funny schleppy Detective Hoke novels and the films that followed.
September 28, 2024
"I crawled along the length of the sign toward the ditch. I squirmed along on my belly. A baby creeps and a snake crawls. I crawled, my head low to the ground. In a way, it was like being on a patrol. I was excited. There was a taste of copper in my mouth and every sense was alive and tingling. This is why there is war. Men like this highly exalted feeling. Hunting animals is a poor substitute for the real thing. The only time a man is really alive is when he is close to death."
March 31, 2023
This fast-paced novella is an unconventional private eye tale populated with seedy, greedy characters. Willeford, having written it under a pseudonym in 1956, rehashes the usual private-eye-falls-for-a-femme-fatale formula. But he throws in enough curveballs to keep the reader off-balance, starting with the first scene where a beautiful young lady struts into the private eye's office. Our lovers eventually make their way to no-holds-bar Las Vegas where the action grows even weirder. I'd say WILD WIVES is great fun to read on a rainy or snowy day.
June 6, 2023
4.5*
February 4, 2016
Willeford takes what seemingly starts out to be a typical hard-boiled private eye story and turns it on it's head with with this fast paced and insanely plotted noir.
March 16, 2012
Cockfighter keeps popping up on one shelf or another of my recommendations here on Goodreads so when I found this classic hard-boiled novel in an op-shop for $1 I knew I HAD to try Charles Willeford for myself.
And I wasn't disappointed. It's a tiny novella filled with seedy and conflicted characters and a simple yet convoluted plot. Perfect pulp material.
Three seperate parts are vivid in my mind for different reasons; the first being the description and behaviour of Barbara Ann Allen is graphic and shocking in it's content like a slap to the face with a block of ice, if you weren't sure that this novel was going to be anything different than a cheap Dashiell Hammett knockoff already then by page 4 you will be 100% convinced.
Willeford follows this up with some gratuitous and unnecessary violence; first you're given a hint as Jake Blake nonchalently attacks a man without prior warning and a few pages later what amounts to a hate crime with some self-loathing thrown in and some latent homosexuality undertones, is as brutal a beating as I've seen described in literature for quite some time.
The final image I'll leave you with is the climax, Willeford manages to pull a rabbit out of a hat when you didn't even see the hat or the arm reaching in to it, with as true a depressing, existential and classically pulp noir ending as you've ever read.
A fast and enjoyable read but not long enough to truly be called amazing.
And I wasn't disappointed. It's a tiny novella filled with seedy and conflicted characters and a simple yet convoluted plot. Perfect pulp material.
Three seperate parts are vivid in my mind for different reasons; the first being the description and behaviour of Barbara Ann Allen is graphic and shocking in it's content like a slap to the face with a block of ice, if you weren't sure that this novel was going to be anything different than a cheap Dashiell Hammett knockoff already then by page 4 you will be 100% convinced.
Willeford follows this up with some gratuitous and unnecessary violence; first you're given a hint as Jake Blake nonchalently attacks a man without prior warning and a few pages later what amounts to a hate crime with some self-loathing thrown in and some latent homosexuality undertones, is as brutal a beating as I've seen described in literature for quite some time.
The final image I'll leave you with is the climax, Willeford manages to pull a rabbit out of a hat when you didn't even see the hat or the arm reaching in to it, with as true a depressing, existential and classically pulp noir ending as you've ever read.
A fast and enjoyable read but not long enough to truly be called amazing.
July 7, 2017
This was a slim but satisfying noir novelette that delivers exactly what you want from a slim but satisfying noir novelette.
(MOST CONCISE. REVIEW. EVER.)
(MOST CONCISE. REVIEW. EVER.)
April 24, 2022
Willeford’s forte is not adhering to a stereotype. Sure, this is hard-boiled noir, but few things are as expected in his novels.
Here, what on the surface of it seems to be a fairly typical Private Investigator as protagonist, gradually gets turned on its head. Initially Jake Blake comes across as just another hard up and short of work detective..
Blake is aghast when the unexpected happens. It seems his luck is in. A beautiful, but psychotic young woman, the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect, calls at his office requesting his help for plenty of cash.
But as the story develops, his methods become more and more unorthodox, and his behaviour eccentric and often bizarre.
It’s evident that even early in his writing career, this was published in 1956, Willeford feels obliged to experiment with the genre. There’s an evident nod to Hammett / Goodis / Thompson / Leonard here, but always with a sense of irony. Law and order are out the window. Willeford’s plot is driven by fate. For anyone coming to Willeford for the first time, don’t expect a happy ending.
Just unfortunately, this isn’t as well developed as many of his other novels, and loses something because of it. It’s too short, and consequently some of the aspects of the plot are slight and appear hurried. The novel was apparently written in a sleazy San Francisco hotel room in a few hours when Willeford was at home on leave from the Army.
Nonetheless, it’s very different to your usual US noir writing, and easily read inside a couple of hours.
Here, what on the surface of it seems to be a fairly typical Private Investigator as protagonist, gradually gets turned on its head. Initially Jake Blake comes across as just another hard up and short of work detective..
The rain hit hard at my window. It slowed down to a whisper, then hit hard again. All afternoon the rain had been doing this while I sat behind my desk with my feet up, doing nothing. I looked around at the ratty little office and wondered vaguely what time it was.
It wasn’t much of an office. The four walls were painted a sickly lime-green, and the only bright spot in the room was the famous Marilyn Monroe calendar with its flame-red background. Two ladder-backed straight chairs, a two-drawer file cabinet, a cheap combination typing-and-writing desk and a swivel chair completed the furnishings. The rugless floor was laid with brown and yellow linoleum blocks.
Blake is aghast when the unexpected happens. It seems his luck is in. A beautiful, but psychotic young woman, the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect, calls at his office requesting his help for plenty of cash.
But as the story develops, his methods become more and more unorthodox, and his behaviour eccentric and often bizarre.
It’s evident that even early in his writing career, this was published in 1956, Willeford feels obliged to experiment with the genre. There’s an evident nod to Hammett / Goodis / Thompson / Leonard here, but always with a sense of irony. Law and order are out the window. Willeford’s plot is driven by fate. For anyone coming to Willeford for the first time, don’t expect a happy ending.
Just unfortunately, this isn’t as well developed as many of his other novels, and loses something because of it. It’s too short, and consequently some of the aspects of the plot are slight and appear hurried. The novel was apparently written in a sleazy San Francisco hotel room in a few hours when Willeford was at home on leave from the Army.
Nonetheless, it’s very different to your usual US noir writing, and easily read inside a couple of hours.
December 29, 2018
This is a fast-paced archetypal noir. Reads more like a treatment for screenplay and I'm surprised this one was never made into a movie, because it has all the classic 1950s noir elements. The opening scene, though, with the girl with the water pistol and her schoolgirl skirt flipped up as she's bent over the private eye's desk asking him to spank her, well, that is surely unique to the noir canon!
November 14, 2016
This early book by Charles Willeford has depth beyond it's deceptively simple plot. At first glance, it's just another detective story, but beneath the surface is an examination of post-war America, with a noir protagonist who has been changed by the war he fought in, and even may be suffering from PTSD beneath his always cool, sarcastic exterior.
Not Willeford's best work, but definitely worth reading if you like noir with a little more depth.
Not Willeford's best work, but definitely worth reading if you like noir with a little more depth.
January 10, 2018
Enjoyable, quick little read. Great cover!
April 30, 2024
Not his best work. This was pretty run-of-the-mill by Willeford's standards.
August 10, 2017
Damn, so good. Got this for less than a buck from PlanetMonk Books. This is the kind of book that you won't find in Barnes & Noble anymore--100 pages with zero filler. Protagonist Jake Blake is a sexist, racist, homophobe sleazebag of a PI. But he's entertaining and the action in the book is nearly non-stop without ever feeling forced or repetitive.
November 27, 2015
Well, this certainly is a fast and fun read!
Liked the twists that happened all the way to the end. My only complaint was the title.
Liked the twists that happened all the way to the end. My only complaint was the title.
November 15, 2023
Generally, I like the work of Charles Willeford, but Wild Wives is not one of his best works. Its main character, private detective Jake Blake, is a man who does not make good decisions. When he runs off with the flighty tramp Florence Weintraub, thinking he had killed her husband, Jake just gets in deeper and deeper. If you want really top-flight Willeford, read the Hoke Moseley novels.
July 3, 2025
Quick and dirty crime/PI story. Shows its age pretty fast.
March 13, 2012
This will be the 4th or 5th Willeford I've read...the last one High Priest Of California that a review or two or more say has been paired with this one. The synopsis has some similarities to that other from Willeford...although this one features a detective, whereas the other featured a used-car salesman...detective work only figured into the story in the way that Frank "Dolly"...I forget his last name...detected who the woman is that he met at the dance blub....(update:edit: it was Russell Haxby in the Willeford story; whereas it was Frank "Dolly" Dillon in the Jim Thompston story, A Hell of a Woman...but had I not corrected this....and who is to say I'm right?...this'd be the gospel?]
This one begins:
The rain hit hard at my window. It slowed down to a whisper, then hit hard again. All afternoon the rain had been doing this while I sat behind my desk with my feet up, doing nothing. I looked around the ratty little office and wondered vaguely what time it was.
Well it's 8:13 P.M. now on a rainy Monday evening and it's a half-hour past sunset...just getting dark here....onward and upward.
update, complete, Tuesday evening, 6:58 p.m. e.s.t.
What makes this story a joy to read is the comic elements. Jake Blake is a private investigator and it is the interactions between him and the other characters that makes this one a go. Several women enter his life and office where he works in San Francisco....some hotel...though I forget the name of it....his home and office is there.
The 1st is a younger girl, not yet sixteen, and she wants to get into the business. She's a hoot. I'm reminded of those Sunday morning movies, black and white, on the old Magnavox and then that big color beast that was the size of a coffin...Shirley Temple...the girl here is an older version of Shirley...little bit of spice and sauce added. We're going there in a handbasket, as Karl said, as have others, and this is true. So ingredients are added over time.
Then...there's another woman who seeks his services...a paying customer this time...the girl is working w/o pay.
It is the second woman and the interaction between Jake and her that mimics the story in High Priest Of California...w/o going into details, this version is a better read. Why? Why ever? Too good to be true? Those sorts of things? Yeah. Maybe that's it.
Anyway, an enjoyable story and in the end, the wages of sin is punishment so be prepared, be very prepared.
Good read. I'd read it again...this one and the other from Thompson, A Hell of a Woman.
This one begins:
The rain hit hard at my window. It slowed down to a whisper, then hit hard again. All afternoon the rain had been doing this while I sat behind my desk with my feet up, doing nothing. I looked around the ratty little office and wondered vaguely what time it was.
Well it's 8:13 P.M. now on a rainy Monday evening and it's a half-hour past sunset...just getting dark here....onward and upward.
update, complete, Tuesday evening, 6:58 p.m. e.s.t.
What makes this story a joy to read is the comic elements. Jake Blake is a private investigator and it is the interactions between him and the other characters that makes this one a go. Several women enter his life and office where he works in San Francisco....some hotel...though I forget the name of it....his home and office is there.
The 1st is a younger girl, not yet sixteen, and she wants to get into the business. She's a hoot. I'm reminded of those Sunday morning movies, black and white, on the old Magnavox and then that big color beast that was the size of a coffin...Shirley Temple...the girl here is an older version of Shirley...little bit of spice and sauce added. We're going there in a handbasket, as Karl said, as have others, and this is true. So ingredients are added over time.
Then...there's another woman who seeks his services...a paying customer this time...the girl is working w/o pay.
It is the second woman and the interaction between Jake and her that mimics the story in High Priest Of California...w/o going into details, this version is a better read. Why? Why ever? Too good to be true? Those sorts of things? Yeah. Maybe that's it.
Anyway, an enjoyable story and in the end, the wages of sin is punishment so be prepared, be very prepared.
Good read. I'd read it again...this one and the other from Thompson, A Hell of a Woman.
October 23, 2020
“No more playing around with Florence for me.” A dame, a death, a dash for dough and a dupe. Florence’s reckless driving was never going to end well. This has a last minute, nicely set up, ironic twist which, although it isn’t novel, raises “Wild Wives” up a notch from the mundane and demonstrates Willeford’s ability to make everything matter, even little girls firing water pistols. However, “Wives” is very much minor Willeford, he’d scale greater heights elsewhere. It’s perfectly readable, anticipates “Badlands” (if you’re feeling generous) and is short enough to be downed in one satisfying gulp but it’s very run of the mill. It certainly makes a case for requesting a review of your partner’s mental health as part of a pre-nup, though
“Pick-Up” – Willeford’s previous novel – felt more sophisticated than “Wild Wives” which makes me wonder whether this short novella was exhumed from a bottom draw at the behest of Willeford’s publisher. Your standard unsuccessful, hotel-based, investigator Jake Blake – eventually likened to a snake – gets hired to help one Florence Weintraub evade the goons her father (it says here) has sicked onto her to keep her under control. Booze, grub, dancing and a little fire escape ooh-la-la inevitably occurs, Florence turns out to be not quite the standard wayward daughter she claims to be (“an ex-inmate of a booby hatch”) and the predictable mayhem ensures. Meanwhile, an encounter with sixteen year-old Barbara Ann sets up the local lawmaker’s antipathy towards Blake and art collector Jefferson Davis appears and disappears, apparently only to supply Blake the opportunity to demonstrate his violent tendencies when Davis’ “wife” Freddy Allen tries to insert a fire extinguisher into him. Even the central murder is fairly meh. Willeford hints Florence might be more designing than she lets on and certainly the pay off at the end demonstrates Willeford has been keeping a close eye on all the plates he set spinning but there is a schematic feel to this romp and not enough characterisation to really lift it.
This – after “Pick Up” and “The Burnt Orange Heresy” – is the third Willeford I’ve read which features some link to the art world. This fixation seems to have disappeared by the time Willeford hit pay dirt with “Miami Blues”. One shot tales like “Wild Wives” served two purposes back in the day, apart from making money: to satisfy the salacious tastes of the male readership and to elicit a wry smile when the rat at the centre of proceedings gets either brought down by his own designs or by Lady Fate. In 2020 you’re more likely to see such stories as “chapters” in something like “Red Dead Redemption” or done on a grand scale as in “Breaking Bad” or “Sin City” but personally, I still like the prose fiction versions best and a sub-par Willeford isn’t going to change that. “That’s a good word for it. Unfortunate.”
“Pick-Up” – Willeford’s previous novel – felt more sophisticated than “Wild Wives” which makes me wonder whether this short novella was exhumed from a bottom draw at the behest of Willeford’s publisher. Your standard unsuccessful, hotel-based, investigator Jake Blake – eventually likened to a snake – gets hired to help one Florence Weintraub evade the goons her father (it says here) has sicked onto her to keep her under control. Booze, grub, dancing and a little fire escape ooh-la-la inevitably occurs, Florence turns out to be not quite the standard wayward daughter she claims to be (“an ex-inmate of a booby hatch”) and the predictable mayhem ensures. Meanwhile, an encounter with sixteen year-old Barbara Ann sets up the local lawmaker’s antipathy towards Blake and art collector Jefferson Davis appears and disappears, apparently only to supply Blake the opportunity to demonstrate his violent tendencies when Davis’ “wife” Freddy Allen tries to insert a fire extinguisher into him. Even the central murder is fairly meh. Willeford hints Florence might be more designing than she lets on and certainly the pay off at the end demonstrates Willeford has been keeping a close eye on all the plates he set spinning but there is a schematic feel to this romp and not enough characterisation to really lift it.
This – after “Pick Up” and “The Burnt Orange Heresy” – is the third Willeford I’ve read which features some link to the art world. This fixation seems to have disappeared by the time Willeford hit pay dirt with “Miami Blues”. One shot tales like “Wild Wives” served two purposes back in the day, apart from making money: to satisfy the salacious tastes of the male readership and to elicit a wry smile when the rat at the centre of proceedings gets either brought down by his own designs or by Lady Fate. In 2020 you’re more likely to see such stories as “chapters” in something like “Red Dead Redemption” or done on a grand scale as in “Breaking Bad” or “Sin City” but personally, I still like the prose fiction versions best and a sub-par Willeford isn’t going to change that. “That’s a good word for it. Unfortunate.”
August 3, 2018
I read both this and High Priest of California in the span of a few hours as my first introduction to Willeford's writings. I found out about him in the back section of the copy of "The Atrocity Exhibition" put out by REsearch publications as a throwback to times when you ordered things from the back of pulp magazines. Boy was I not disappointed. Misogyny, chauvinism, racism, greed, lust, alcoholism enough to make Bukowski blush (but I see where he must have drawn his ideas from now), Willeford really does it all.
High Priest of California, his first work, is a straightforward man meets woman, man finds out she has a senile husband, man schemes to eliminate husband ruining the husband's life, man sleeps with woman, and finally, man moves along. All throughout this short work the narrator (a used car salesman) gleefully schemes his way through a small cast of characters, drinking martinis and making cash over fist in crooked deals and eating at Antonio's. The "flourishes" of character here made me do a double take and check the author's name to make sure it wasn't Bukowski- a protagonist who drinks like a fish, listens to classical, and loves poetry. Willeford's protag however also takes great pride in how how looks and in living relatively well. I kept picturing Harry Chinaski crossed with not Don Draper but Ken Cosgrove; slightly smug and yet likeable enough. There isn't anything special in the writing here, it is funny, somewhat repetitive and very workmanlike. The plot itself is something that could be dreamed up in an afternoon but polished with enough details to really give it life. A good introduction.
The next one, Wild Wives, was the title that drew my initial attention. This one is more of a detective novel, but instead of a tight Chandler esque plot it's just a gumshoe trying to get laid and getting tangled up in a cast of batty characters. Basically a woman comes asking a detective to help her shake off two men her "father" has tailing her. He succeeds and they form a romance but there is more to it than it seems. They end up on the lamb with him regretting his decision and her showing more and more signs of why this story is called what it is called. Really funny moments here and observations, a much more polished up work than High Priests with all the anti PC elements toned down just a tad to a dull roar.
These are fun books to read and they are certainly not high literature. They are meant to be enjoyed leisurely by the sea or in the mountains or after a long day. This is like my comfort food of reading. The classics are great and all but at one can't live on caviar alone. OH and if you like Bukowski AT ALL Willeford is a must read.
High Priest of California, his first work, is a straightforward man meets woman, man finds out she has a senile husband, man schemes to eliminate husband ruining the husband's life, man sleeps with woman, and finally, man moves along. All throughout this short work the narrator (a used car salesman) gleefully schemes his way through a small cast of characters, drinking martinis and making cash over fist in crooked deals and eating at Antonio's. The "flourishes" of character here made me do a double take and check the author's name to make sure it wasn't Bukowski- a protagonist who drinks like a fish, listens to classical, and loves poetry. Willeford's protag however also takes great pride in how how looks and in living relatively well. I kept picturing Harry Chinaski crossed with not Don Draper but Ken Cosgrove; slightly smug and yet likeable enough. There isn't anything special in the writing here, it is funny, somewhat repetitive and very workmanlike. The plot itself is something that could be dreamed up in an afternoon but polished with enough details to really give it life. A good introduction.
The next one, Wild Wives, was the title that drew my initial attention. This one is more of a detective novel, but instead of a tight Chandler esque plot it's just a gumshoe trying to get laid and getting tangled up in a cast of batty characters. Basically a woman comes asking a detective to help her shake off two men her "father" has tailing her. He succeeds and they form a romance but there is more to it than it seems. They end up on the lamb with him regretting his decision and her showing more and more signs of why this story is called what it is called. Really funny moments here and observations, a much more polished up work than High Priests with all the anti PC elements toned down just a tad to a dull roar.
These are fun books to read and they are certainly not high literature. They are meant to be enjoyed leisurely by the sea or in the mountains or after a long day. This is like my comfort food of reading. The classics are great and all but at one can't live on caviar alone. OH and if you like Bukowski AT ALL Willeford is a must read.
October 18, 2012
A hardboiled PI who's just a bit desperate for cash.
My Take
This was a bit Alfred Hitchcock with a flavor of 39 Steps about it. I kept waiting for one betrayal, but got several others.
For a private investigator, Blake seems a bit clueless and pretty lazy. Letting those thugs get the jump on him. He simply takes Florence's story at face value. Jumps to conclusions. Fluffs off Bobby.
It seems too that a guy like him would have reacted quite differently to Davis's come-on. That was just not believable. And what was with his bundling up his suit like that to get rid of it? It was like he had something to hide. Then there's the motorcycle cop at the end. If Blake was accused of this particular murder, why would the cop give him his gun??
Willeford did capture the flavor of the times though, and his characterizations were otherwise right on the money if somewhat exaggerated. Something of a necessity in a story as short as this---102 pages.
The Story
Work is slow and Jake Blake jumps at the chance for some easy money helping out a beautiful dame with cash to burn. Too bad he didn't question the circumstances.
Then karma rolls back to bite for his treatment of Bobby.
The Characters
Jake Blake is a hardboiled, cocky private investigator whose business isn't doing well.
Florence Weintraub is a much put-upon twenty-six-year-old whose daddy has surrounded her with bodyguards. Milton Weintraub is an architect involved in a number of city projects and they seem to have some sort of sick relationship. Ferguson and Melvin are the bodyguards.
Detective Sergeant Ernest Tone is a friend. Lieutenant Stanley Pulaski is not.
Freddy Allen is a gay man supported by a wealthy art dealer, Jefferson Davis. His sister Barbara Ann is a pushy troublemaker who really doesn't deserve what Blake sets her up for. But then, neither does he.
Jefferson Davis is a fellow resident of the hotel and he isn't sure if he has a problem or not.
The Cover
The cover is very 1940ish, 50ish with its fluorescent pink appearing in the background wallpaper, the title, and a curved border at the bottom. The wallpaper itself is a white bamboo print against a radial gradation of pink scattering to gold. Then there's the black-and-white of Florence Weintraub in her diamonds and marabou-trimmed dress.
The title is a misnomer as it's only one wild wife.
My Take
This was a bit Alfred Hitchcock with a flavor of 39 Steps about it. I kept waiting for one betrayal, but got several others.
For a private investigator, Blake seems a bit clueless and pretty lazy. Letting those thugs get the jump on him. He simply takes Florence's story at face value. Jumps to conclusions. Fluffs off Bobby.
It seems too that a guy like him would have reacted quite differently to Davis's come-on. That was just not believable. And what was with his bundling up his suit like that to get rid of it? It was like he had something to hide. Then there's the motorcycle cop at the end. If Blake was accused of this particular murder, why would the cop give him his gun??
Willeford did capture the flavor of the times though, and his characterizations were otherwise right on the money if somewhat exaggerated. Something of a necessity in a story as short as this---102 pages.
The Story
Work is slow and Jake Blake jumps at the chance for some easy money helping out a beautiful dame with cash to burn. Too bad he didn't question the circumstances.
Then karma rolls back to bite for his treatment of Bobby.
The Characters
Jake Blake is a hardboiled, cocky private investigator whose business isn't doing well.
Florence Weintraub is a much put-upon twenty-six-year-old whose daddy has surrounded her with bodyguards. Milton Weintraub is an architect involved in a number of city projects and they seem to have some sort of sick relationship. Ferguson and Melvin are the bodyguards.
Detective Sergeant Ernest Tone is a friend. Lieutenant Stanley Pulaski is not.
Freddy Allen is a gay man supported by a wealthy art dealer, Jefferson Davis. His sister Barbara Ann is a pushy troublemaker who really doesn't deserve what Blake sets her up for. But then, neither does he.
Jefferson Davis is a fellow resident of the hotel and he isn't sure if he has a problem or not.
The Cover
The cover is very 1940ish, 50ish with its fluorescent pink appearing in the background wallpaper, the title, and a curved border at the bottom. The wallpaper itself is a white bamboo print against a radial gradation of pink scattering to gold. Then there's the black-and-white of Florence Weintraub in her diamonds and marabou-trimmed dress.
The title is a misnomer as it's only one wild wife.
August 13, 2009
At 93 pages, this book is more like a novella than a novel, which makes sense, as it was originally issued in 1956 as the second half of a double novel, with Willeford's "High Priest Of California" in front of it. Like a B-movie at a double feature, the second half of a double novel doesn't really have to be that long. Willeford's "Wild Wives" is also similar to a B-movie in that it has an action-packed plot, with lots of lurid sex and violence. Finally, like a B-movie, it spends a great deal of its rather short length making little coherent sense. Instead, we follow narrator Jake Blake, a small-time private eye who's always behind on his bills, through a few days of adventures that don't seem to have much connection to each other. Blake is the sort of amoral sociopath that occupies the main role in many of Willeford's early novels, and he rises to the occasion by lying to, beating up, or sleeping with pretty much everyone he runs into for the first half of the novel. Somehow, though, he retains our sympathy, or at least some of it, and when it seems like it all might come back around to bite him in the ass towards the end of the novel, other readers may find themselves, as I did, rooting for him to somehow get away with it all. It'd be wrong for me to comment too much on the climax of the novel, but I will say that it leaves you conflicted as a reader, and highlights Willeford's working-class existentialism. For a quickly-paced noir novel with plenty of subtext about the pointlessness of modern American society, you can't go wrong here. The only disappointing thing about "Wild Wives" is that it's a $12.95 trade paperback with, as I said, only 93 pages of text. You'd do better to hunt down the Re/Search reissue that pairs it with "High Priest Of California," but then again, it's out of print, and for all I know it commands collector's prices on the secondary market. You can't win.
March 8, 2015
Interesting novel, utterly bleak and delivered in pithy prose style by Willeford. The narrative is punctuated by moments of excess: casual scenes of dialogue explode into savage violence. A conversation between the protagonist/narrator, his client/lover and her husband is interrupted by her incessant screaming and a close-quarters bout of fisticuffs between the two men. It's hard to tell if this is a cruel fantasy or a deadpan satire of the hardboiled genre (Spillane et al). Given the qualities of Willeford's later work, I'm edging towards the latter.
The protagonist, like Willeford, is a veteran of WWII, and the climax is structured like a PTSD flashback (to use the parlance of our, not Willeford's times), beginning with the protagonist's memory of seeing his first dead body by a roadside whilst traveling in a column in Europe, and ending with him crawling through a ditch, flanking an 'enemy position', in mimicry of his military service.
A fascinating novel.
The protagonist, like Willeford, is a veteran of WWII, and the climax is structured like a PTSD flashback (to use the parlance of our, not Willeford's times), beginning with the protagonist's memory of seeing his first dead body by a roadside whilst traveling in a column in Europe, and ending with him crawling through a ditch, flanking an 'enemy position', in mimicry of his military service.
A fascinating novel.
February 20, 2012
Willeford's description of characters is unique and all his own which is just one reason I like to take a break with his books.
This one is shorter than most books and I can't point to one person as the real 'bad guy' since every person has his (or her) flaws, deep flaws. One reviewer said 'deadpan' humor, and another said 'wry off-beat humor.' I agree with both. Charles Willeford gave writers who read him and who came after him, something use in their writing. I'm sure Willeford would have been flattered. Maybe.
This one is shorter than most books and I can't point to one person as the real 'bad guy' since every person has his (or her) flaws, deep flaws. One reviewer said 'deadpan' humor, and another said 'wry off-beat humor.' I agree with both. Charles Willeford gave writers who read him and who came after him, something use in their writing. I'm sure Willeford would have been flattered. Maybe.
March 2, 2017
The purpose of Wild Wives seems to be a lesson in what would happen if a private eye like Sam Spade had to actually face the music for his smart ass behavior. He seems to pay for everything in this tale. Punching a thug, smarting off to a lieutenant, and playing a practical joke on a teenage girl all come back to bite him. It's a short book and maybe the first time I literally read a whole story in one sitting. It wasn't difficult. Willeford's prose moves smoothly and never lacks for action. It's maybe not as bleak as Jim Thompson, but it belongs squarely in that hard boiled category.
February 6, 2012
Bizarre, very short and kind of kinky too. Doesn't make a lot of sense either. I liked it.
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