Last Good Kiss: Amazon.ca: James Crumley: Books

Product Description

Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

32 Reviews

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.6 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars There's much better out there, Oct 25 2003

By

Kirstin (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Good Kiss (Paperback)

This book has been praised by many, including crime writers I admire, but now that I've read the book, all I can say is that I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The story lacks suspense and narrative tension (things just kind of happen, one after another, to the passive protagonist); the characters are disappointingly superficial; and my B.S. meter was in the red zone throughout a large part of the book. It's neither a mystery nor a thriller; it's more of a period road-trip story with a weakly-motivated quest and some shady characters and dealings thrown in. The ending (with or without the last chapter) brought no satisfaction.

How anyone can compare this writer to James Ellroy is beyond me. Yes, there's some superficially grim subject matter in The Last Good Kiss, but Ellroy, unlike Crumley, digs into his stories' evil in a relentlessly true and honest way. Further, where Ellroy's writing sings and bops, Crumley's is pedestrian. Perhaps sleazy subject matter was shocking in the '70s, but it sure isn't now. The whole '70s on-the-road shtick gets old fast, too. The bulldog was the best thing about this book.

If you want to read fine crime writing that's grim, true, and well written, try Ellroy's The Big Nowhere and the rest of his L.A. Quartet, or anything by Dennis Lehane.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a winner!, Oct 14 2002

By

Kirk Alex - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Last Good Kiss (Paperback)

I agree with the other reviewers--a well-written P.I. novel. I don't usually read mysteries these days and even though I read this one two decades ago I simply had to say a word or two about it as a way of paying respects to Mr. Crumley and the fine job of writing he has done here. Terrific read. Just thinking about it makes me want to buy another copy (I lost the first one somewhere) for a second reading. Genre novels of this caliber are few and far between. Bukowski attempted to write one entitled Pulp and failed miserably. I like Buk a lot, but to be honest he missed the target entirely with his take on the P.I. tale. What can you do? Last Good Kiss delivers.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Dont Judge This One by the Cover, May 22 2003

By

A. Wolverton (Crofton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Last Good Kiss (Paperback)

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

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Best detective novel ever written
I bought this book some years ago because I liked the picture of the bulldog on the cover. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. C.W. Read more

Published on Oct 9 2002 by Cindy

5.0 out of 5 stars Sughrue Is In Control
The story begins with private detective C.W. Sughrue tracking down poet and author Abraham Trahearne, who has taken off on a drinking binge. Read more