Just-As-Fried
Posted: 17 January 2011 08:46 AM   [ Ignore ]
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I’d like to see a spin-off show with the cops as well as the bad guys loaded all the time. Weed, speed, coke, khat, booze, (of course, including moonshine), X, and whatever else is around. The theme would be law enforcement is just as fried as the dopers.

Maybe Gregg will pitch the idea to his man Yost.

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Posted: 17 January 2011 09:54 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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I am reading DANCING BEAR by James Crumley.  The main character, Milo (security guard/private investigator), does some blow and then a shot of schnapps every other chapter.  He also has the occasional beer or joint.  It is a fun and unique kind of book.  I have reserved a few more of Crumley’s books at the library.

Elmore Leonard’s review of DANCING BEAR for the New York Times

James Arthur Crumley (October 12, 1939 – September 17, 2008) was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays. He has been described as “one of modern crime writing’s best practitioners”, who was “a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel” and a cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson.[4] His book The Last Good Kiss has been described as “the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years.”

Crumley had a cult following, and his work is said to have inspired a generation of crime writers in both the U.S. and the U.K, including Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehaneand Craig McDonald, as well as writers from other genres such as Neal Stephenson, but he never achieved mainstream success. “Don’t know why that is,” Crumley said in an interview in 2001, “Other writers like me a lot. But up until about 10 to 12 years ago, I made more money in France and Japan than in America. I guess I just don’t fit in anyplace” in the genre book marketplace.

Crumley’s first published novel, 1969’s One to Count Cadence, which was set in the Phillipines and Vietnam, began as the thesis for his master’s degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1966. His novels The Last Good Kiss, The Mexican Tree Duck and The Right Madness feature the character C.W. Sughrue, an alcoholic ex-army officer turned private investigator. The Wrong Case, Dancing Bear and The Final Country feature another p.i., Milo Milodragovitch. In the novel Bordersnakes, Crumley brought both characters together. Crumley said of his two private detectives: “Milo’s first impulse is to help you; Sughrue’s is to shoot you in the foot.”

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Posted: 24 January 2011 06:46 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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Dancing Bear is excellent, but The Wrong Case, Crumley’s first Milo novel, is superior. The Last Good Kiss is another top shelf novel.

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Posted: 25 January 2011 05:52 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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I just finished THE LAST GOOD KISS.  It was good until the end.  It became a classic during the last ten pages.

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Posted: 14 February 2011 11:53 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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Hmmm I have both the Dancing Bear right now and The Last Good Kiss! Which one do you guys recommend I read first?

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Posted: 14 February 2011 02:59 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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Read Last Good Kiss first. Then, before beginning Dancing Bear, read The Wrong Case.

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Posted: 14 February 2011 03:00 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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awesome! glad I didn’t start them out of order yet…

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Posted: 22 February 2011 05:00 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]
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I didn’t make any

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Posted: 22 February 2011 05:01 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]
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I didn’t make any KISS yet

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Posted: 22 March 2011 03:25 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 9 ]
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I read The Last Good Kiss and was blown away. May be a little spoily here, so watch out. I read a great paragraph, then came another, then another. The guy is relentlessly a superlative craftsman.
How about the main character, private eye Sughrue, quit drinking but now he is: two drinks past reality and three drinks shy of drunk.
And he says of his life: the past is unwanted baggage, the future is long goodbyes and the present is an empty flask.
Wracked by what he did in the war, he is looking for Betty Sue, all right, but mostly he is searching for himself.
What a nice way to have this gumshoe off on two searches then to tie them together, then to have a resolution you didn’t see coming.
This deserves to have a movie of it made.
I have bear and wrong case on order at the library.

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