Retro Review: Wild Wives by Charles Willeford

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Keywords: crime fiction, noir, hardboiled, private detective

Wild Wives (1956) is Willeford's third novel and I'd say that here he's working on finding his voice but not quite there yet.

There is only one wife involved though I suppose you can use the plural "wives" on a technicality. Spoiler alert: Florence Weintraub's husband is killed and she marries private detective Jake Blake under the alias Mary Brown so I suppose that could constitute "wives".

Despite the blurbs, I don't think it all that good. An entertaining and short read, sure. If you like this genre, you'll find some Jim Thompson loser laid low by bad choices and some Micky Spillaine hardboiled and maybe some Philip Marlowe sardonic humor in PI Jake Blake but it lacks the polish you see in later books like the Hoke Moseley series and The Burnt Orange Heresy.

Jake Blake is hired by Florence Weintraub to get away from two thugs hired to watch her by an overbearing father. Only it turns out that Milton Weintraub is Florence's husband and Jake is only the latest in a string of lovers. When Weintraub ends up dead, Jake and Florence hit the road to avoid a murder charge and to collect money Florence has stashed in Las Vegas, enough to get them to Mexico City. Jake finds out that Florence has problems that he sort of suspected but might provide a way to put him in the clear for Weintraub's death. With the Florence problem taken care of, Jake thinks he can go back to his old life as a San Francisco private detective but a seemingly innocent prank involving a teenage girl comes back to haunt him.

Wild Wives is a fun read and I'm not sorry I read it though I wouldn't say that it advances the genre. It is an interesting stop on the way to the Hoke Moseley novels: Miami Blues, New Hope for the Dead, Sideswipe, The Way We Die Now.