Time Through
This book really sucks, Ragtag band of Hornyfits.
If I wanted to read about horny guys and the various ways they humiliate themselves, I'd read Harvey Weinstein's biography or I'd turn on the subtitles on PornHub.
It's so easy to tell when a guy is trying to get "Hollywooders" to buy his book,
I Take Titles Literally I'm a Titular Fundamentalist
I don't like titles like this, Reminds me of The Strawberry Alarm Clock, A Clockwork Orange, Lead Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Stupid names. "The SharkInfested Custard" was an interesting read with its multiple narrator perspective, I expected Willeford to concentrate on the National Security guy Larry because he is the professional with a gun, and most noirs have a formulaic protagonist.
Instead, he defied my expectations and gave lion's share of the narrative to Hank the drug salesman, The episode involving Hank Norton, the notorious hairy armpits dame Jannaire, and Mr, Wright refreshed my waning interest after the quartet of guys dealt with theyear old girl from a drivein theater and Mr.
Yellow Jump Suit, and disposed of their corpses, After one character freaked out and shot Mr, Yellow Jump, I wondered if the novel weren't going to degenerate into an exercise in paranoia with each of the foursome wondering who would buckle under the pressure and inform first on the others.
Mind you, in Part I, Willeford wrote: "In Florida, the guilty party who spills everything to the State Attorney gets to first gets immunity.
. . " Instead after this episode, Willeford shifts everything to Hank, This initial incident ultimately is used to foreshadow the ending, but I won't divulge anymore than I must, By the way, this is the first novel I have read that contained a character afflicted with 'vitiligo,' something that I've seen, but never knew the word for it.
The character of Mr. Wright reminded me of a killer in the Hemingway shortstory "The Killers," about a killer who willingly accepts death without fanfare.
The conversation about ElectroDating between Larry and Hank was entertaining when you consider the psychology involved in it, The idea that people lie when they answer questions for a dating service was interesting, Perhaps that is why I never had any luck, These four guys know each other about as well as tightknit friends would know each other, and they are living in a singles only apartment high rise in Miami when the narrative unfolds.
They make a bet with Hank on the worst place that he could go to pick up a woman, This is how they stumbled onto theyear old girl and later Mr, Yellow Jump Suit. This escapade doesn't come back to haunt them, Larry handles the disposal of the corpses, and then Hank takes over and we learn about the difficulties of being close friends the way these guys are.
Hank doesn't want to confess certain things to his friends when it concerns his image of a stud, He tangles with the aforementioned Jannaire and he discovers a secret that surprises him, Later, we learn more about Don and Eddie, Out of the four, the weakest link is Don, He is married but separated from his wife, Don has a daughter that he adores, and eventually he tries to patch up his marriage so he can spend more time with his daughter.
Unfortunately, things don't work out,
Altogether, "The Shark Infested Custard" is an aboveaverage novel, but it is uneven at times and the outcome is rather unsavory despite the way that the guys treat their last predicament.
Reportedly, Willeford felt this was his best book, I didn't like it as much as his Hoke Mosley detective yarns, but the prose and the dialogue are sharp, When I picked it up, I didn't realize at the time that this was his last novel that originally had been split into two stories.
Four selfabsorbed, womanizing, borderline sociopathic bachelors inhabit this novel, There's raunchy sexual content, burst of violence and sprinkles of racism, Set in the Miami of the's which makes some details seem dated, Best enjoyed by middleaged men and I get the sense that women will not find this novel cute, endearing or funny.
An oddly structured novel, with lots of descriptive filler as though the author just wanted to hit a word count then again lots of authors seem to do thatwhich bugs me.
Didn't love it, didn't hate it, I really like the author but I think this is one of his weakest,
An odd novel aboutunpleasant sleazebags in ''s Miami, Odd in that these are four guys no one in their right mind would want to be stuck with for any length of time longer than it takes to shoot a game ofBall.
That said, it is an interesting depiction of's mores within the more savage of the singles, Willeford doesn't pull punches and stays true to his characters, For that I admired it, The subtitle "A Novel" isn't quite a goddamn lie, but it's close, It's more like a set of four semiconnected short stories / novellas centered on a group of four guys making the most of the singles lifestyle ins Miami.
A pharmaceutical salesman, a private security operative, an airline pilot and the henpecked middleman for a luxury silverware firm, they run the gamut from cocksure shitheels to hopelessly deluded fuckups.
Abandoning wives and lovers, committing grand theft, covering up the overdose death of a teenage girl picked up at a drivein as the result of a bullsession bet.
. . these smarmy yet oddly sympathetic jackasses keep digging their own holes deeper and deeper as they're drawn into crimes acutely satirizing the freewheeling morals of the swingin' 's.
The casual, nighsociopathic misogyny on display is fairly unnerving, until it slowly becomes apparent how their disregard for women is catching up to them, exiling them one by one from their Florida paradise to a purgatorial existence in a Chicago suburb.
The plotting is a little sloppy at times, but Willeford's gleefully subversive take on the crime novel is in fit form.
As in his best works, it all unravels like a grotesque shaggy dog story, building up to a typically twisted punchline.
Solid stuff, but definitely not for all tastes, Completely chilling, more in the contrast between its banality and the casual violence, though the violence is real enough in this humid Miami of the lower whitecollar worker with aspirations and rampant masculinity.
Interchangeable stewardesses abound, nubile sexstarved Cubans too, the man certainly has one use for women, But it's a hard book to put down the characters may be unlikeable but they are certainly unforgettable, And the neighborhood grocery store owner withhits under his belt Pure genius, This was fucking sick. Very psychologically rich, as if Dostoyevsky wrote a crime novel, Perfect critique of these kind of guys, Incredible, crackling dialogue which contrasts so nicely with the chillingly flat affect of the prose itself, Some people mistake first person narratives as the voice of the writer, Those people also usually think that the characters represent ideas the author actually believes and wants to express as his own.
Then, there are people who actually know how to read, These people know that characters, even the POV character are not the author and that with good authors, sometimes the discomfort the author is giving you through a POV character is the point.
If you dont get that or dont believe that, dont read Willeford, and especially do not read this book,
Willeford puts you right inside the head of true sociopaths with zero schlock, These are not redeemable characters and you are not supposed to like them, This is probably how these behave in reality, We all know someone like them,
The prose is dry and funny, with some laugh out loud passages and other sections that become more chilling every time you think about them.
Willeford knows people and knows characters and assumes youre already in on the joke,
His descriptions of food and people are often equally hilarious and disgusting this goes for all of his novels.
He seems to have a deep knowledge of strange
and very human character traits that normally one wouldnt think would appear false teeth, body odor that makes a guy horny, strange jobs.
His characters love to order hamburgers, They also like to speak in medium size monologues telling people what to do, Hes not for everyone, but man I like to read it, I would almost call it satire but it isnt really that, and its definitely not crime/detective fiction but it isnt NOT that.
Definitely mischaracterized and under appreciated,
But anyway, Miami is the custard and men like our four protagonists are the sharks, Good stuff. Mine seems to be the minority opinion here on Goodreads, but that's okay, I think this novel is brilliant and here's why: Willeford gives us a very tense situation between four friends after making a bet with one another.
Then we get a look at each of these guys individually, learning why they act and live the way they do.
As these four sections sheds light on each character, we begin to understand how they became friends, why they've stuck together, and how the implications of their predicament are so potentially devastating.
Amazing stuff. Willeford has long been considered the master of the Miami noir tale, He has a knack for creating some rather twisted characters with human foibles, The "SharkInfested Custard" is a dip into the swinging singles scene of Miami in the early's, The scene, at least to start, is a giant singles apartment complex no families allowed, "They won't let two men share an apartment, " But, the "rules are relaxed for women, and two women are allowed to share one apartment, "
It's the perfect place for men on the prowl and there are so many stewardesses and nurses bunked up there that a guy can't help but score.
This story is told from various points of view among four young men who have made their home in this complex Larry Dolman the ex cop, Hank Norton the pharmaceutical sales rep, Eddie Miller the pilot, and Don Luchessi, who sells silverware for an old British firm.
They work as little as possible, spend hours at the pool, and on martinis,
But, this is a Willeford novel, so there is a dark underside that pops up, It pops up when the men make a bet about whether Hank can pick up a "broad" that's the lingo at the toughest place in Miami a drivein theater since what woman would go there except on a date, and he comes out with a drug overdosing fourteenyearold.
Even the guys are creeped out
And there are other hints that the dating scene might not be what the television shows make it out to be: when one of them finds a woman through a dating service and another walks out of a party with her, what could possibly happen except six frustrating weeks of dating and never getting very far and all of a sudden the irate husband shows up and starts shooting.
Meanwhile, Don is locked into a marriage with a woman he can't stand and eventually he tries running off with his daughter and hiding out from the wife.
This isn't anything like the noir novels that made Willeford a cult favorite or the Hoke Mosley crime stories that made him famous towards the latter part of his career.
But, there is something a little bit twisted and different about life in a Willeford novel and this isn't just a story about young men on the prowl or coming of age.
The writing is smooth and professional and Willeford ropes the reader in pretty deeply before letting out hints that all might not be what it seems on the surface.
Being young and single and successful might be something, but you also gotta know how to dispose of bodies, how to deal with sharpshooting irate husbands, and when to leave town.
So are the young men featured in the story the "sharks" swimming around in the custard Or is their illusion of what life is the sweet sugary custard and the reality that they experience is a pool filled with sharks at every turn It is easy to find them amoral hedonists, but they really don't go looking for trouble.
It just sort of finds them, They are not really that much more predatory or cruel than most other people or are they,
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Charles Willeford