Crumley, the much-revered US author who died in 2006 brought a new vigour to the crime novel and reinterpreted the tropes of Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald with his disillusioned bruised masculinity and rambling sense of American disconnect. With a new introduction by an admiring Ian Rankin, THE LAST GOOD KISS is Crumley at his best, hardboiled to perfection, cynical, written like a clockwork mechanism where every sentence is quasi-perfect and boasts one of the most memorable opening sentences in the history of crime fiction. When private eye C.W. Sughrue ('as in rue the fucking day'...) catches up with Abraham Trahearne, a runaway writer on a three week binge, he also comes across his alcoholic bulldog in a California bar and the scene is set for a profane journey in search of the landlady's missing daughter that will take him to San Francisco and his own version of hell. Profane, gripping, in the shadow of the horrors of the Vietnam war and paradoxically poetic, a crime novel as fever dream and one for the ages. We can only hope Crumley's other books will soon dutifully follow in new editions. They are classics that should not be allowed to ever go out of print.
Maxim Jakubowski's May 2016 Book of the Month.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
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As sweetly profane a poet as American noir could have asked for. (Ian Rankin). A friggin' masterpiece. (Dennis Lehane). The stunner that reinvigorated the genre and jacked up a generation of future crime novelists. (George Pelecanos). Meet Private Detective C. W. Sughrue. Private detectives are supposed to find missing persons and solve crimes. But more often than not Sughrue is the one committing the crimes - everything from grand theft auto to criminal stupidity. All washed down with a hearty dose of whiskey and regret. At the end of a three-week hunt for a runaway bestselling author, Sughrue winds up in a ramshackle bar, with an alcoholic bulldog. The landlady's daughter vanished a decade ago and now she wants Sughrue to find her. His search will take him to the deepest, darkest depths of San Francisco's underbelly, a place as fascinating, frightening and flawed as he is. Welcome to James Crumley's America.
The Last Good Kiss features in the following genres: Crime and Mystery, Thriller and Suspense, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
The Last Good Kiss is available in Paperback
The Last Good Kiss was written by James Crumley and published by Black Swan an imprint of Transworld Publishers Ltd
The Last Good Kiss has 381 pages
£9.89
