Reading this book raises up the adrenaline level in the reader's blood! Yes, we know that USA is a very powerful country, yet, we should never underestimate the power of the so called "third countries" Now we know, that anything can happen in this world....if we just... "LOVE and let LIVE", but no, we are not in paradise....and that is a cruel reality.
Mrs. and Mr. Crumley, we just added this book to the Eagle Pass Public Library. Eagle Pass, Texas.
GOD bless you.

The Crumley's have written a book that all Americans and especially our leaders should read. In light of what happened September 11th we must be ready for anything. Few terrorists could write as chilling a tale but don't think for a minute they aren't schemeing to continue their evil acts.

In Weapon Of Jihad, an Iranian/Iraqi Coalition seeks to strike at America through the means of biological warfare. Mike Thompson's microbiology studies in college lead him to befriend two Iranian students, Malik Aziz and Sadeq Nadim. The Ayatollah's rise to power unleashes a chain of events eventually pitting these men against each other, and the fate of America hangs in the balance. Weapon Of Jihad is a doubly chilling, exceptionally well written, contemporary novel showcasing how vulnerable the United States is to widespread biological terrorism. The fiction of today could so easily become the newspaper headline tragedy of tomorrow!

What a sad read ... Joe Sixpack gets mixed up looking for a famous author who likes to go on drinking binge road trips across the western states. Crumley creates in C. W. Sughrue midwestern Phillip Marlowe who's just as tough and cynical as the LA original. If you've read all of Raymond Chandler's works and are looking for something along that line of style then this book is for you. It has the fem fatales and the damisals in distress. And most of all the romance of the hard-boiled genre in general. The story carries you through at a good pace not stopping along the way with the characters as they live out their so-called lives. With the qualities of a modern fairtale there's no happy ending ... just the gritty Tao-like reality of life in the modern world. While set in the late 70s the writing is timeless as Chandler's Marlowe.

Gardner Dozois recommended James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss to me as the best hard-boiled detective novel written in the last ten years. With that kind of recommendation, I would have been hard-pressed to pass it up. And Dozois is correct, as far as I can tell. Crumley's C.W. Sughrue has that quality that I thought was lost when I finished reading the last Dashiell Hammett story. But Crumley isn't just playing off of Hammett and Chandler, although he is firmly in their tradition. Crumley is as post-modern as they come, and knows that life and people are as sleazy as anything James Ellroy or Andrew Vachss has put to the page (not to even mention the real thing).

C.W. Sughrue is hired to track down a derelict author who's on a drinking binge by the author's ex-wife. What begins so simply quickly soon complicates--I can't quite explain how complicated it becomes, either. There's a point in the middle of the novel where I said to myself, "Well, that's it. We've had the set-up, the complication, a little goose-chase, a climax, and here we are." But I was only halfway through the book. Contrary to normal novel structure, Crumley leaves you hanging within the denouement while he sets up an entirely new climax not once or twice, but three times.

Crumley has taught literature in Texas, Arkansas and Montana, and understands the directions recent fiction has taken. Although he's not about to give up the traditional, he has assimilated some of the modern tricks. The ending, in particular, is something that I doubt you would have seen in a previous decade.

All in all, Crumley is a voice that is worth looking out for. On the basis of The Last Good Kiss, I plan to search out his other two novels and his short story collection. I recommend that you do, also.

By the drawing of the bulldog on the most recent cover, one might mistake 'The Last Good Kiss' for a cozy, cute mystery. That would be a mistake of monumental proportions. 'The Last Good Kiss' is a hard hitting, gritty, graphic hard-boiled novel about some pretty nasty people doing some pretty nasty things. It's also exceptionally well written.

C.W. Sughrue, a Montana P.I., is hired to track down a drunken writer. He finds his man, but along the way Sughrue takes another case, a case he knows will lead to nothing good. His job is to find a girl who ran away from home many, many years ago. The hunt for the girl leads Sughrue through a parade of despicable degenerates with no redeeming qualities.

It can be a hard novel to read and a difficult one to forget. In Sughrue, Crumley has created a detective who lives in a broken world, hoping that there might just be one good thing on the horizon, one good reason to live, one good thing to believe in. The settings, characters, tone...it all works, establishing the novel as one of the greats in the hard-boiled mystery genre. But again, if you are looking for a nice, cozy mystery to curl up with for a relaxing evening, this is not for you. Definitely not for kids.

244 hard-boiled pages

I met Kent Anderson as a student when he was teaching at Boise State University. While working on a paper which dealt with trying to understand the "combat high," I read his fantastic "Sympathy for the Devil" and got hooked on his Hanson character. Years before "Night Dogs" came out, he talked about some of the things he was going to put into the book, so I had been waiting a long time to see Hanson re-emerge. Alas, I was not disappointed, "Night Dogs" has that same pushing-the-envelope realism I loved in "Sympathy." The Hanson character is an amazing paradox of savagery and kindness wrapped up like a too-tightly-bound rubber band ready to explode or implode at any moment. Like "Sympathy," "Night Dogs" has the same feel of sanity in a world of insanity, of living hard with memories and the realities of a street cop's life. The streets of Portland take on the same insane, sad, and humorous elements that Hanson's Vietnam had. "Night Dogs" has an expertly woven surreal quality that few authors can capture. Anderson makes mention of author James Crumley in "Night Dogs". On a whim, I researched his works and have also become addicted to his fiction. He too writes of Vietnam and hard living, and I recommend any of his works as well. Kent Anderson is an amazing writer who I hope will continue to share Hanson with us and, for that matter, anything else he might grace us with.

A truly astonishing book. Hanson is as memorable a character as you're likely to encounter. He is an amazing and utterly believable mix of contradictions, and there's nothing about him that seems anything but deeply and nakedly real. A startlingly honest book, especially since it's apparently autobiographical. Unfortunately, Anderson's Sympathy for the Devil is out of print, but I just got it through inter-library loan. Can't wait to read it, after which I'll read Night Dogs again. Kent Anderson tells the truth, and he can flat-out write.

With NIGHT DOGS, Kent Anderson continues the life of Hanson, the protagonist from his first novel, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. As a cop in Portland, Oregon, Hanson squares off with the demons he brought out of the Vietnam war. But even more importantly, Anderson gives readers the most honest portrayal of life as a cop I've ever read. Be warned, NIGHT DOGS is not for the polictical correct or the weak-minded, it's for readers who want the truth, no matter how ugly that truth may be. Simply put, NIGHT DOGS is the best novel to come out of the United States in twenty years

This book is as valuable for the light it sheds on Patton's character as it is for the detailed accounts of his various European campaigns. Patton's directness (admittedly the book was a rough draft of what would have been published had he lived) confirms that he was a man committed to discerning and speaking the truth. Generous with friends and reticent with enemies, he appears honorable and entirely credible in his explication of the facts of the War. As for his opinions on the nature of war, they are very clearly encapsulated in the appendix, and are shown to be both learned and hard to refute.

A large portion of the book is concerned with the dispositions of the Third Army; these sections would undoubtedly be easier to follow if more and better maps were included in the book.

"War As I Knew It" is not an autobiography. It is not a study of World War II. And it is not a doctoral dissertation. It is simply one of the greatest, most insightful accounts of the campaign in NW Europe, beautifully written by one of history's most charismatic and successful generals.

The book begins with a collection of open letters written by Patton during the time of his campaigns in North Africa and Sicily. For cesnorship reasons, these letters do not contain much battle information, but they provide a unique insight into the man Patton was, and how he dealt with problems that were not military in nature. He discusses his meeting with French and Arab leaders in attempts to protect his rear while he defeated the Germans to his front. The letters from Sicily are similar, discussing not so much tactics but outcomes, reactions, and the like. These early letters show how much Patton was moved around, and the interesting places that he visited.

The main part of the book covers Patton's proudest moments--commanding the U.S. Third Army. This section is wholly unique. Written shortly after they campaign ended with Germany's surrender, Patton describes the actions of Third Army from Normandy to Czechoslovakia. While he does not go into great detail about tactics and such, he provides a window into his own mind. The reader knows what he was thinking when he made his decisions, and the reasons that he made those decisions. In so doing, the reader gets a firm understanding of how an army worked in WW II. Also, he mentions his personal relationships with many different generals...ones you don't read about in history books. In short, this is a first hand account from the man who was a pure warrior.

The concluding section is Patton's gift to future leaders. He was a student of warfare, and his own contributions to the art are invaluable. He discusses everything from the conduct of general officers, to what the best tactics for attack are, to how to deal with trenchfoot! In conclusion, anyone who enjoys military history, or just plain good writing, should read this fascinating book written by a man born for war.

A great book even after all those years. The reader gets a pretty good impression of Patton's personality an his way of thinking. The first part of the book covers his experiences in Northern Africa and Sicily from 1942 on. Besides the military aspects he describes how he learned to know the local cultures and we are reminded how well educated he was in some other sciences than war. The second and biggest part deals with the operations conducted by his Third Army from France to Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria. Very informative are his views of Eisenhower, Bradley and Montgomery as well as the German side especially concerning the Battle of the Bulge. The third part is a personal view of tactics, the military generally and his career. All in all a great book for people interested in military history as well as leadership. A little drawback, as in many books covering military history, is the lack of good maps, the few maps in the book only give a very general impression of the campaigns.

Crumley hits all the bulls-eyes, but why are we doing this? The characters are etched like diamonds, but I never figured out what or who was directing the dance. "Dancing Bear" is 228 pages long. On page 221, Milodragovitch says "Hell lady, I'm still not real sure what this was all about." Milo's comment made me feel marginally better. How could I be expected to know when the hero didn't?

Milo obtains a break from his security job to take a well paying case from a wealthy elderly lady who seems to want nothing more than to find out what her neighbors are up to. It quickly transpires the "neighbors" are up to deadly games. Milo's new allies are over-interested in his inherited 3,000 acres of prime land, and one is the type of environmentalist we all love to hate. She is the Aquarian kind who has her eyes so firmly fixed on the "big" picture that she neither notices nor cares about the devastation she is wreaking while straining for her goal. Another ally is out to prove no man can ever resist her charms; all she has to do is put her mind to it. And these are his friends! You ought to see the bad guys! Trouble is we never are clued in to exactly what the motivation is for anyone but Milo. He just plain gets sick and tired of everyone trying to knock him off. Very understandable.

"Dancing Bear" is an interesting read because of the well-drawn characters. Crumley zeros in so well on an overweight, hard-as-nails, prostitute; we understand perfectly why Milo finds her an irresistible Red Hot Mama---not an easy task. The pace is fast, but we don't know where we are going, and the master crime/criminal is about as amorphous as having a vague discontent with General Motors. It was not the follow-up I expected to the brilliant "The Wrong Case."

Dancing Bear updates the old-fashioned hardboiled detective genre but could have benefited from some old-fashioned plotting. Milo Milodragovitch is the dissolute antihero; a world-weary, bottom-of-the-barrel ex-cop/ex-PI reduced to scraping by as a security guard until events plunge him back into surveillance work and danger. He's got a kind heart and a self-destructive streak as wide as the Montana landscape that serves as the story's backdrop. Milo's adventures are fueled by copious quantities of booze, cocaine, casual sex, and violence, but it's all too half-hearted to convince or even entertain. Author James Crumley tells his tale in first person. Though he writes well he nonetheless fails to capture that peculiar 'loser logic' that would allow the reader to buy Milo's often irrational behavior. Detective and the reader spend the bulk of the novel wondering what's going on, yet by the end it hardly seems worth the long, strange trip.

James Crumley seems sadly overlooked when people start namedropping Raymond Chandler's successors. Perhaps because Crumley puts himself and his stories so delibaretly outside the normal scheme, with detectives rather operating in Montana and Wyoming than on the sunny sidewalks of California. Crumley's finest moment is without a doubt the bitter "The last good kiss" but I still regard this work superior compared to what else you may find of your standard crime litterature.

Never one to picture a warm and healthy society Crumley introduces us to our anti-hero Milo as he has given up his work as a P.I. and started working as a security guard. What he has not thrown away with his former job is a drug and alcohol abuse that would kill even Dean Martin's liver. As Milo finds himself accepting to do a small and trivial case for an old lady that knew him as a child, he's tangled up in a web of violence, narcotics and everything else you would expect our northern states devoid of. Crumley's prose is accurate and poignant filled with dark satire and sometimes hilariously funny. The link drawn between him and Hunter S. Thompson is not as far-fetched as one might think.

The book seems to take of halfway with a violent twist that seems unnecessary and almost speculative. (Although nothing compared to Crumley's latest "The Mexican Tree Duck" which is a long tirade of doped-out violence.)

All in all the book turns out (as most of his novels) as a whacked-out "On The Road" story, told by a far more believeable character than the late Philip Marlowe.

***(*) stars on the barometer.

James Crumley's 1996 Bordersnakes is an example of the "hard-bitten", "tough guy" genre, and tells the story of two alcoholic ne'er-do-wells in search of a Mexican drug kingpin and killer. Crumley's plot and characters move with great vigor and dead-pan humor, and I found myself at the end of most chapters convincing myself I had to read "just one more." I do not expect the details of this book to stay with me for any length of time -- Crumley wrote entertainment, not literature -- but I will recommend this book to friends as enjoyable beach or fireside fodder.

Milo and Sughrue team-up to slay each others demons and solve their common mysteries. "Bordersnakes" is truly vintage Crumbley.

In this story, Crumbley ties-up some of his long running plot-lines: Milo's money and Sughrue's fear of relationships. Milo's long awaited inheritance is embezzled before he receives it, and the old war-horse sets out to find the banker who robbed him. On the way he enlists Sughrue's help. In the meantime Sughrue enlists Milo's help to find the Chicano assassins who left him gut-shot and for dead. Coincidentally, they find the two events are linked.

This is classic Crumbley with his gritty scenes and pithy prose. It would help for the reader to have read previous Crumbley novels like "One to Count Cadence" or "The Last Good Kiss" for background. However, this is two tough, old men taking on a bunch of very bad characters relying on a wealth of experience, firepower, and their ability to absorb tremendous punishment. Along the way they find time to get drunk, stoned, and laid--great stuff.

In places the story is a little weak. Crumbley may know his way around a MOSSBERG 500 BULLPUP, but laptops and cryptography are blackboxes and blackmagic. It seems like every gumshoe now needs a pet geek to move the plot along. Finally, Milo and Sughrue have always been much the same character. Putting the two of them together in the same story was a Sybil-like reading experience. Both characters speak with the same voice.

If you are a Crumbley fan read it. The only problem you will have is "who do you like better, Milo or Sughrue"? Otherwise, the uninitiated may find this novel a bit confusing.

Milo and Sugrue booze and snort and fight their way, around the Nexican border mostly, with a few stops in the Northwest. Milo is looking for someone who cheated him out of some money and Sugrue for some people who have tried to kill him. The plot is so convoluted that I lost track. I don't know if that means I suffer ADD but a lot of the time I could not figure out why the heroes were acting as they did. As Sugrue says "Every time we look for somebody we find them dead." Not only do they find them dead but they get accused (sometimes justifiably) of killing killing them. Great scene-setting, some stereotyped characters, a lot of violence, a lot of sex and a lot of fun.