RIP James Crumley

One of the great writers I've had the pleasure of reading. I did a cut and paste on the following from an e-mail from Seattle Mystery Books (a place I visited during the outing in June):

‘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 of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.’

That’s the opening line of James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss (Vintage, $12.95). It is often sited as one of the finest opening lines in modern mystery writing, if not of all time, in all of fiction, and the start of a modern masterpiece. Crumley died two days ago, on Sept. 17th in Missoula, MT.

He was, like his characters, a hard-living human. He leaves us with a series of great books with private eyes C.W Sughrue and ‘Milo’ Milodragovitch [The Wrong Case is just as wonderful as The Last Good Kiss - same publisher and price – Case is the first with Milo and Kiss is the first with Sughrue]. Each had a couple of books to themselves and then, in later books, they joined forces in the same story.

He was also the author of a notable Viet Nam novel, One to Count Cadence (Vintage, $14).

Jim was born in Three Rivers, TX, on Oct. 12, 1939. He served in the army from 1958 – 61 and taught English at various colleges from Reed in Portland to Carnegie-Mellon. James Crumley was 68.

 

I haven't read One to Count Cadence.
Must go order now.