NP--Another Hardboiled Crime Wonder--James Crumley

[rich]

not sure if he's been mentioned but I'm reading The Last Good Kiss and
I'm loving it
barstool poetry doesn't get any better (booze-sick dudes, drugs,
motels, despair, worn out women, roaming the western American highway
nightmare from Montana to California)

Just as an entire generation of British schoolboys can perfectly
recite Monty Python's parrot sketch, there are few American crime
writers of the hardboiled school who cannot quote verbatim the opening
to James Crumley's novel The Last Good Kiss: "When I finally caught up
with Abraham Traherne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog
named Fireball Roberts, in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma,
California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
The novel was only Crumley's second foray into crime fiction but it
brought him instant cult status among writers and readers of the
genre.

--from the Guardian obit last Sept.

rich