Bought this with the last chunk of a Xmas book voucher, because it was well positioned in Waterstones as you went through the door.
I have read a Crumley before, years ago, called 'The Mexican Tree Duck', which I don’t remember enjoying much. This one however is very good – an introduction by Ian Rankin brings out the similarities to Raymond Chandler which I'm sure I would have missed.
The PI, improbably and challengingly to pronunciation named Sughrue, is a hard drinking 60’s renegade, hired to track down an equally hard drinking writer who has disappeared. That mission accomplished, he is then persuaded to track down the daughter of the landlady in whose bar he finds the writer.
It all gets very messy from then on, but it is a great read, not unlike James Lee Burke, but without the anger and catholic guilt of those books. Sughrue is just a hard man hippy.
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