The process was fine, but the finished product was always ugly. This was the saddest moment of the chase, the silent wait for the apologetic parents or the angry spouse or the law. “Whenever I found anybody, I always suspected that I deserved more than money in payment. His thoughts upon locating his quarry are worth repeating in full. He tracks Traheane for weeks down endless stretches of black top and numerous dead end bars, almost entering a dream like state, before finally finding him. The Last Good Kiss starts off with CW Sughrue being paid to search for an alcoholic, larger than life, Norman Mailer-type writer called Abraham Traheane. I was determined to mark the most memorable passages but gave up by page 30. The story is a terrific piece of distilled hard-boiled noir, and Crumley is such a fine writer. It’s certainly the best one I can remember reading, and I’ve read a lot. Second, it may very well be the best piece of private investigator fiction written. Whatever the case, I came away from the book thinking two things.įirstly, it probably has the greatest opening line of any book I’ve ever read. It was maybe my third or fourth time, I’m not sure. I recently re-read James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma California, drinking the heart out of a fine spring afternoon.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |