For a few minutes I sat in my car, wondering what to do next. So far my knowledge concerning Marion Huneker added up to zero, although I thought I detected a pattern of some kind.
--Charles Willeford, Understudy for Death (originally 1961, Hard Case Crime Edition 2018)
Kudos to Hard Case Crime for reprinting many original paperbacks long out of print, including Understudy for Death. Willeford first came to my attention when the movie Miami Blues, directed by Roger Corman protégé George Armitage, came out in 1990 (Willeford died in 1988) and I started reading Willeford's books, starting with the four, including Miami Blues, about Hoke Mosley. Gradually Willeford's books have been coming back into print.
Understudy for Death was a paperback original that includes a fair amount of sex and violence, most of which is fairly tame by today's standards. A married woman kills her two young children and herself and reporter Richard Hudson is assigned to investigate the story. He gets nowhere, distracted by his wife Beryl asserting her new independence, the other women he meets and his own insecurities and failures. This existential pulp novel reminds one of Antonioni's L'Avventura, which came out the year before Willeford's book, about a search for a missing woman who is never found.
Willeford reminds me of John D. MacDonald, who wrote many paperback originals before writing the series about Travis McGee: both authors write cynically about the development of Florida in the 60's and the complexities of passion and love. My favorite Willeford novel is Pick-Up (1967), a moving story about people down on their luck.
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