James Crumley (1939-2008) - Texas tough guy, Army vet and creator of some of the most colorful crime fiction ever written, this rugged author could do drugs and drink whiskey with the best of them. A watering hole in Missoula, Montana has a bar stool dedicated to James Crumley.

From the first page of this, the author’s best known novel starring first-person narrator and slumping hero Montana investigator C. W. Sughrue, "Trahearne had been on this wandering binge for nearly three weeks, and the big man, dressed in rumpled khakis, looked like an old solider after a long campaign, sipping slow beers to wash the taste of death out of his mouth. The dog slumped on the stool beside him like a tired little buddy, only raising his head occasionally for a taste of beer from a dirty ashtray set on the bar." Language a reader will find on every page, which goes to show James Crumley has more to offer than simply the well-worn formula of crime fiction where a detective goes about cracking the case punctuated by wisecracks, drinking, fistfights and bedding babes. Here are a fistful of reasons I love this novel and recommend it highly:

VIBRANT, COLORFUL LANGUAGE - To underscore this point, here’s another example: searching for clues in an attempt to locate a girl who ran away from home ten years ago, Sughrue encounters her old high school music teacher, “He came to the screen door before I could knock, a small man with a painfully erect posture, a huge head, and a voice so theatrically deep and resonant that he sounded like a bad imitation of Richard Burton on a drunken Shakespearean lark. Unfortunately, his noble head was as bald as a baby’s butt, except for a stylishly long fringe of fine, graying hair that cuffed the back of his head from ear to ear. He must have splashed a buck’s worth of aftershave lotion across his face, and he was wearing white ducks, a knit polo shirt, and about five pounds of silver and turquoise.” Oh, baby, Sughrue, tell it like it is.

RAMOND CHANDLER REDUX - More than simply language, the two detectives, Crumley’s Sughrue and Chandler’s Marlowe share a hardboiled cynicism, sharp tongue, sharp wits and big, tough guy body along with an ability to make intelligent use of both fists and firearms. Crumley published a Viet Nam war novel in his 20s and didn’t read any detective fiction until well into his 30s when his friend, poet Richard Hugo, suggested Chandler. Crumley followed Hugo’s advice and was obviously inspired (Crumley acknowledges Chandler’s strong influence) as he went on to write his own first-rate detective fiction, a string of books rightly regarded as first-rate literature.

TUG AT OUR HEARTSTRINGS – Rosie sits on the front steps of her bar and tells Sughrue all about how her long lost baby girl, Betty Sue Flowers, ran away as a high schooler ten years ago. Sughrue tells Rosie too much time has elapsed; he will never be able to find her. Rosie insists, heaves and sobs some more, and presses eighty-seven dollars into his palm. Along with Sughrue, we as readers are moved by the depth of Rosie’s emotion and pain. The missing person hunt is on, from San Francisco to Denver to the state of Oregon with some not-so-fun stops in between - a whole lot of driving for our bear-drinking cynic investigator.

TRAGIC HERO, COMIC BUFFFOON – "Big, fat, larger-than-life poet and novelist, drunk and whoremonger Abraham Trahearne is a modern day King Lear and Falstaff all rolled up into one. As a novelist he leaned on his war experience to write about a young lieutenant on a remote island in the Pacific during the final week of World War II so in love with killing he refused to let his men know the war was over. He then went on to write two other novels about, in turn, survival out at sea on a raft and a father and son’s revenge in the woods. After his travels and adventures with his new drinking buddy Sughrue, Trahearne finally comes out the other end of a long, dry spell where he is able to begin what he knows will be his masterpiece. But great art might require serious blood sacrifice. Sound like trouble? It is trouble.

THE SIRENS OF ODYSSEUS, THE WITCHES OF MACBETH – Traheane has to deal with three powerful woman in his life – his mother, his ex-wife and his current wife. You will have to read the novel to find out for yourself if one or all three of these women are inspiration-giving sirens or curse-giving witches or a maddening combination. Since I can’t resist the humor, I will share what Trahearn’s mother says about her quitting writing after she hit the jackpot and struck it rich with her two best-sellers “If you’ve read my two novels, then you k now what sort of fairy tales they are,” she said, “and if you’ve talked to my son, you know the truth of my life here. I took money from fools, boy, and I earned it, but don’t give me any bullshit about art.”

AMERICA THE SEEDY – Philip Marlowe waded through seedy 1940s Los Angeles and C.W. Sughrue travels through heaps of 1970s seedy Western United States where the scummy world of pornography with its sleazeball promoters and dope-taking porn stars in Chandler’s The Big Sleep reappears on a much larger scale.

THE BULLDOG - Darn, you have to love beer drinking Fireball Roberts, slobbering buddy of the good guys and loyal canine pal, forever ready to heed the call to action and sink his teeth into a deserving backside. For me, Fireball Roberts added a real zest to the story – each scene with Fireball was one small step for alcoholic bulldog, one giant leap for page-turning novel.

THE GLAD AND THE SAD – The Last Good Kiss is 19 chapters long. If Chapter 18 was the book’s last chapter we would have had a happy ending. But there’s that final Chapter 19, Crumley’s biting, hardboiled social commentary on how 1970s America has taken a tougher, more violent turn in the 30 years since Chandler and Marlowe. Read all about it. You might even shed a tear.