"She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced."

Russell Haxby is a ruthless used car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue and lust set in San Francisco in the early fifties. In High Priest of California every sentence masks innuendo, every detail hides a clue, and every used car sale is as outrageous as every seduction.

• Haxby meets Alyce Vitale at a dancehall

"A tempo so relentless, words practically fly off the page."
Village Voice

"Willeford never puts a foot wrong, and this is truly an entertainment to relish." The New Yorker