Synopses & Reviews
Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C.W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.
Review
"It is hard to tell whether it is the style or simply the milieu this novel depicts that makes it so engaging. At first sight, however, the fashionable theme of the search for the author is an anomaly in a work whose real focus of attention seems to be that slightly incredible world of seedy motels, ghostly gas stations, and forlorn truck stops of the Far West. Crumley has a real grasp of speech rhythms and manages to capture the specific geography of the modern American West. Ultimately, as his heroes Sughrue and Traherne search for the elusive Betty Sue Flowers, the novel threatens to become a successful parody of the sophisticated fiction we at first thought beyond its reach." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Marvelously constructed and jolting with surprises, Crumley's The Last Good Kiss should solidify his distinguished reputation." Publishers Weekly
Review
"James Crumley is a first-rate American writer... pyrotechnically entertaining, sexy, compassionate." Village Voice
Review
"Crumley's writing ranks with the best." Sacramento Bee
Review
"The Last Good Kiss is a powerful story powerfully told, and Crumley is one of the finest additions to the private eye genre. Crumley
brings to his books
a knowledge and understanding of the American psyche few writers in any genre have managed." Buffalo News
Review
"The Last Good Kiss is a novel of detection, one so rich in detail, with character and plot so well developed, that it works on many more levels than just storytelling." St. Louis Dispatch
Review
"What Raymond Chandler did for the Los Angeles of the Thirties, James Crumley does for the roadside West of today." Harper's
Synopsis
One of the most influential crime novels ever written, by a legend of the genre.
Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares."
Synopsis
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - One of the most influential crime novels ever written, by a legend of the genre. Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.
Synopsis
An unforgettable detective story starring C.W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar.
About the Author
James Crumley (1939- ) was born in Three Rivers, Texas. He served three years in the U.S. Army before he became an English teacher. He is the author of seven novels including, One To Count Cadence, The Wrong Case, The Last Good Kiss, Dancing Bear, Bordersnakes and The Final Country.