This is the second Hoke Moseley one, where his daughters come
to stay with him and they all end up sharing a house with
Ellita Sanchez, his single, pregnant partner.
It's also the one he wrote after the unpublished GRIMHAVEN,
where Hoke has retired from the police department. His
daughters show up to stay with him, and he ends up killing
them. The two books make two parallel universes, one where
Hoke cannot deal with complexity and wants things as simple
as possible--even if it means sitting in a jail cell for
murder--and the other where his depressing life is thrown
into chaos, but which he manages to control and bring into
nice shape at the end. His parenting skills are pretty low
(witness his birds and bees talk with his daughters, and
taking out Aileen's braces was horrible), but their mother is
worse and they'll always get an honest answer from their
father, even if he corrupted himself to provide for
them.
There's a lot of talk about teeth in this one, like in the
first one. Hoke's dentures are always on his mind, and he
takes out his daughter Aileen's braces with toenail clippers.
There's a fair bit of food, but rooms and furnishings get the
most space. Hoke has three books in his room: HEIDI (left
over from his divorce), A STONE FOR DANNY FISHER by Harold
Robbins, and a Webster's dictionary. When he buys and reads
"an occasional paperback novel," he leaves it in the lobby of
his hotel for the others. What's with the Harold Robbins
novel? Does anyone know what it's about?
Hoke's a lot more confident in this one, perhaps because he
has his teeth. What always gets me is how much he knows. He's
never at a loss, he knows how things work, and he can advise
a security guard to get a smaller gun so his kidneys hurt
less, arrange a rental lease for a house in one day, put
pressure on a bank manager so he can find out private
information without a warrant, explain Miami culture, or tell
his daughters how to find a job. His taste in art is
horrendous, though, and he doesn't know what "iatrogenic"
means.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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