New Hope for the Dead was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1985. Hoke Moseley is investigating the death of a young woman found in a Cocaine Cowboys-era Miami crack house. The official ruling is suicide, but Hoke — whose instincts are better than his circumstances — suspects murder. His investigation takes him through the social layers of 1980s Miami, from the wealthy neighborhoods of Coral Gables to the devastated blocks of Liberty City.
Meanwhile, Hoke’s ex-wife has dropped off their two teenage daughters — Aileen and Sue Ellen — and announced that she is moving to California with her new boyfriend. Hoke, who can barely take care of himself, is now responsible for two girls who regard him with a mixture of affection and contempt. The domestic subplot is the novel’s great comic achievement: Hoke’s attempts to be a father — making lunches, setting curfews, dealing with his daughters’ social lives — are rendered with a tenderness that is all the more moving for being buried under Willeford’s characteristic deadpan.
The Hoke Moseley novels occupy a unique space in crime fiction: they are realistic (the police procedure is accurate), comic (the situations are absurd), and deeply humane (Willeford cares about his characters in ways that most crime writers do not). Hoke’s failures — as a detective, as a father, as a human being — are not played for pathos but for a kind of rueful comedy that acknowledges the difficulty of living.
Collecting New Hope for the Dead
First edition (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1985): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Very good/very good: $25–$60