Synopses & Reviews
James Crumley is one of the most influential crime writers of the post-Chandler era, and his raw, subversive novels have earned him living legend status. He first introduced readers to C. W. Sughrue (Shoog as in sugar. And rue as in rue the goddamned day) in his now classic
The Last Good Kiss. An ex-army officer turned Montana private eye, Sughrue is as tough and cynical as he is good-hearted and weak-kneed when it comes to women and booze. Hes back to take readers on a bender through small towns, dark bars, and dank hotel rooms in a novel charged with Crumleys genius for the poetry of violence.
In The Right Madness, Sughrues close friend, psychiatrist Will MacKinderick, begs him to track down stolen confidential psychoanalysis fileshe suspects one of his patients is the culprit. Going against every last instinct, Sughrue agrees to take on the casea $20,000 retainer is always hard to resist. And when the suspects start dying of violently unnatural causes, Sughruefueled by alcohol, drugs, and lurid sexual entanglementsfinds himself struggling to stay ahead of the madness unfolding around him.
Before Pelecanos, Connelly, and Lehane, there was Crumley and, with The Right Madness, he shows us once again how he put the hard in hard-boiled.
Review
Hyperkinetic prose full of rotgut and rue. . . . No one does it better than Crumley. (People) What Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles of the Thirties, James Crumley does for the roadside West of today. (Harpers magazine)
Review
Do yourself a favor and read it tonight. Nothing you could do with your clothes on will be as pleasurable. (Otto Penzler,
The New York Sun)
Synopsis
From the classic "The Last Good Kiss," Sughrue is as tough and cynical as he is goodhearted and weak kneed when it comes to women and booze. He's back to take readers on a bender through small towns, dark bars, and dank hotel rooms in a novel charged with Crumley's genius for the poetry of violence.
Synopsis
James Crumley is one of the most revered practitioners of post-Chandler crime fiction, praised by the likes of Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly as a major influence. C. W. Sughrue is Crumley's most indelible creation. Now Sughrue is back, in a searing thrill ride of a novel that has the seen-it-all Montana private eye trying to find out which of a small-town shrink's bizarre patients has made off with some highly confidential files. Fast-paced, brutal, melancholy, and ruefully funny,
The Right Madness is Crumley at his uncompromising best.
About the Author
James Crumley is the author of eleven novels, including one of the most critically acclaimed detective novels, The Last Good Kiss. The Mexican Tree Duck won the Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel from the International Association of Crime Writers.