Customer Reviews

The Final Country

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

 

 

This is the story of hard-drinking Milo, the antihero of previous novels in this series. He appears more like an arch villian, the exact opposite of a hero.

The thing I liked about this book is its white binding. You don't see many in white, more so in black. White is for purity. Pure is what this book is not about.

Betty had her own pickup truck in this tale. There is a black Buddha who is good enough to buy Milo a drink. He, like my son Geoffrey complains of a bad back, but it doesn't slow down his pace or actions.

The final country is supposedly Texas, that big state which thinks it is a country of its own. Or it could be Montana, according to John Steinbeck in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. He seems to think that Paris is the new 'country' where he might just end up, but I'm not taking bets on that happening.

Using voodoo hit close to home, as did B. L.Brammer's description of it as the boondocks. I know first hand about living in the boondocks and the possibility of having the curse of voodoo alive and thriving in today's world.

The author, a college English teacher who gets his kicks out of writing crime novels,has previously had seven books published. He puts me in mind of Larry McMurtry who wrote a novel, SUTTREE, about my hometown of Knoxville, TN. He, too, is touted by the publishers as a good writer. I know someone here who has met him in a bar on Gay Street and appreciates him as a fellow drinker and writer.

'The Final Country' is my first novel by James Crumley. Since it is an award-winning mystery, complete with accolades from amazon.com (on their Best of 2001 list), I thought I couldn't go wrong with it. Wrong. No, the book isn't awful. It's more like a mess with some interesting bits strewn about.

As for the story, well this is hard to explain. We have an aging private investigator from Montana fighting all sorts of nasty people (druggies, tramps, law enforcers) in Austin, Texas. Lots of strange characters, which is one of the book's strengths, caught up in a completely ridiculous plot. The book is also compromised by its absurd violence, on the order of a Quentin ('Kill Bill') Tarentino film. Yet Crumley's prose is rather decent, complete with crisp (and often hilarious) dialogue.

Bottom line: a hit-and-miss sort of book. But for this reader it was mostly a miss.

There were certain books that we had to read while in school. They were considered great novels and classic literature. They were the sort of books the reader had little doubt of their greatness. The writing was sound and the characters were unforgettable. However, they just simply were not fun or enjoyable books to read. THE FINAL COUNTRY reminds me of that type of book.
Milo Milodragovich is a PI and bar owner in Texas. He comes across a large black man, Enos Walker, who offers to buy him a drink. Unbeknownst to Milo, Walker has, apparently, just killed a drug dealer. Later, the police want Milo to track Enos down so they could prosecute him for the murder. He also searches for a beautiful female con artist who might possibly have Milo convicted for murder unless he could clear himself.
THE FINAL COUNTRY is actually more of a slice of life or a look at some of the most unpleasant characters a reader might ever come across. It is not a pleasant journey. Yet, there is much poetry in the lyrical writing of Mr. Crumley:
"The norther had finally blown itself out by daylight. Dawn came to a wide clear blue sky and cool, dry air. It could have been spring in Eastern Montana. From the green, I could see the flagstone clubhouse where groups of irritated early morning golfers milled around their fancy carts and were obviously bitching about losing their tee times. Like cocaine junkies who had too much money and nothing to do with themselves."
The story, itself, is remarkably dull with the book concentrating on language and character. James Crumley is not a writer for the masses. However, he might very well appeal to the fans of noir fiction.

Maybe it's me, but I just didn't get this book. Lured by good reviews from credible sources, evocative cover art (on the British edition, not the U.S. one), the book's award and the writer's reputation, I dived in for an entertaining escape & emerged impatient & disappointed. What saves the book are some good scenes, some decent description of place & some well-drawn characters. But for me the experience was more like reading a series of creative writing vignettes than a novel. The novel lacks a center, a heart. There is a confusion of characters who lack much more characterization than names & therefore are hard to separate. One character (Molly) changes abruptly from one personality earlier in the novel to another later on to the degree that it was difficult for me to see her as the same person (though I liked Molly No. 2). I found the plot confusing, hard to follow & too sketchy. I didn't know nearly enough about many of the people who turned out to be central characters in the plot's resolution. I specifically did NOT find (as The London Times promised) "lyrical descriptions of an almost vanished West" but rather a fairly average sense of place. On the other hand, Milo & bisexual Betty are interesting characters & the book does have a certain feel to it, so I'm thoroughly ambivalent. Given there's enough reading for several lifetimes out there, I'd recommend choosing something else.

There was a time when I thought James Crumley would become the greatest writer the mystery genre ever produced, and achieve what Chandler only attained after his death, that is, literary respectability and recognition of his talents as a great novelist of contemporary fiction. Crumley had all the gifts a great writer needs - an engaging prose style, finely constructed plotting and a unique voice. And in his earlier book, The Last Good Kiss, he spun all those elements into a story that was intoxicating in it's brillance, a book truly worthy of comparison to the best of Chandler. But thats been more than 20 years ago now and Crumley has neither continued or built upon his earlier promise of greatness. Sure, he can still write a line so good so as to make your heart skip a beat, and he can be funny as hell, but it's in fits and starts and nothing ever comes of it all. Somewhere, somehow ,the discipline that could craft a book such as the Last Good Kiss has gone and we are left with the spectacle of a now undiciplined talent repeating himself to a lesser and lesser effect each time. If you want to read the real Crumley, read The Last Good Kiss or The Wrong Case and see what you've been missing, but don't read The Final Country - it just makes those of us who admired his earlier work sad.

Ask most of the young crime writers in America who they revere and the name Crumley will fall off almost every tongue. In a genre that rewards the fast and the dirty, where publishers throw money at sloppy writing and half-assed plotting, Crumley is a beacon of quality and thoughtfulness. The man cares about the language. What a radical notion for a writer of detective novels. In The Final Country, as in any of his books, you'll find sentences both sleek and rangy, but always beautiful, thought out, worked on. And those sentences come together to form a Voice as consistent and engrossing as any on the contemporary scene - inside or outside the genre. But wait, as the pitchmen say, there's more. You also get a plot as ingeniously assembled as Lamborghini Diablo. A red one. That runs on nitroglycerin. And this books moves as fast as the Diablo. But don't worry, Milo's got his arm around you the whole way, rapping up a coke-fueled storm that, should you listen, will give you a few gem about how an ethical man lives in a foul world. Listen: as long as James Crumley can draw breath and pick up a pen, TV just doesn't stand a chance.

Here we have a story of bottom dwellers looking into the affairs of folks somehow even lower that they are. Not a pretty sight! But, what an enjoyable one. Crumly manages to potray men and women who find themselves in a world of chaos and filth, tainted with sex, booze, drugs and violence. Milo, Betty and friends are the closest to heros you will find lurking in these shadowy pages, but, you wont be able to resist them. I wonder if it is as much fun to write this stuff as it is to read it. If you are a die hard fan of hard boiled PIs, this is definitely your type of book.You will probably feel a lot better about your life after spending a little time with Milo and gang.

Way back in the 1970s, James Crumley wrote "The Wrong Case" and "The Last Good Kiss," two of the finest detective fiction novels ever released. If the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote detective novels, his would read a lot like Crumley's. Alas, like Thompson, Crumley has lost a few miles-an-hour off his fastball as he's gotten older. He writes at a glacial pace, and this is his first novel in over five years (since 1996's "Bordersnakes").

The hero this time out is Milo Milodragovich, appearing in his third novel since his memorable debut in "The Wrong Case." Milo has relocated from Montana to Texas and is semi-retired on a small fortune he "stole" in "Bordersnakes." He can't stay away from the deteective game, however, and ends up with two interrelated cases, neither of which are good for his health. The story features a myriad of characters (over two dozen, I would guess) and meanders like a river across the Texas plain. The scenery is colorful, and the dialog is snappy, but the story is confused, and leads to a less than completely plausible ending. Additionally, the chief villian is only on stage for a total of about a half a dozen or so pages, and is not developed enough as a character to make the first of two climax scenes resonate.

Overall, "The Final Country" is not a bad novel. Crumley is a better writer than 99% of the mytery authors working today, and is still capable of creating vividly memorable scenes. Unfortunately, there are just not enough of them here to give this novel an unqualified recommendation.

Crumley's hero Milo can out drink, drug and fornicate others decades younger. A story too long, with too many names and a "drawing room" conclusion that ends with a not unexpected disclosure, are still not enough reasons to ignore this very talented writer.

I enjoyed chapters 1-4 as the writing style was similar to Dancing Bear. Crumley did a fine job of aging Milo and exposing his silly vanities, which culminate in the canyon fight scene. Milo survives the encounter, due not to his skill but to pure luck. So, how does an old private eye rejuvinate himself? By snorting lots of pharmaceutical grade cocaine of course and not sleeping for 20-30 hours at a clip.

What I dislike most about the story is that Crumley omits clues from the story that will allow the reader to solve the mystery. Indeed, to solve the mystery, Milo hires a couple of people to research the internet for several weeks for the solution (by scouring semi-secret databases), which he then dumps on you in a big denouement in the final 5-10 pages of the book. You know the scene: all the suspects are gathered to her Milo's findings, which culimates in a machine gun fire. Crumley, through Milo, acknowledges that he is using a tired cliche, as he trots it out.

To his credit, Crumley did manage to avoid using a hand grenade as a plot device. I rank this the third or fourth best of the Milo stories (Dancing Bear and Wrong Case being #1 and #2).