The last good kiss ebook

Great characters that I would follow anywhere and became absorbed with enough to be shocked when the plot turned on a dime, especially by the twists in the final pages that do what they should and turn the knife in the wound and force you to view everything that came before in blood spattered lenses. This is kind of a holy grail to Pelicanos, Lehane, and Burke and their gritty, character driven, literate, and substance abuse obsessed takes on noir in the decades following this Crumley classic, so if your fan of them find this key influence.

Also, for the fact that the Last Good Kiss is a classic piece of American literature. Aug 08, Left Coast Justin rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: people who need to be cheered up with a great book. Nearly every page of this book contains lines worth quoting. Here's a few from about twelve pages plucked at random from the middle of the book: Fireball, the alcoholic bulldog introduced in the first paragraph, makes a return on p.

Or at least until Trahearne poured a cold beer into a rusty Hudson hubcap. Muzzle-deep in his morning beer, Fireball ignored us as we climbed in and lowered the top, but when we drove away, he glanced at the locked doors of the house, then followed us down the road with a damned and determined trotting waddle, as if he knew we had the only cold Sunday-morning hangover beers in Northern California, as if he intended to fetch the Caddy by a rear tire and shake them loose. I slowed down to keep an eye on him.

Maybe that's the definition of dumb bastards: they never quit. Note that this opinion was offered by a man who drives about miles around the American West trying to solve a case of a girl who went missing ten years previously. Dumb bastard A few pages later: The next morning I woke up with a faceful of sunshine in the back seat of Trahearne's convertible, sodden with dew, dogspit, and recriminations of high degree.

When I sat up to look around, it looked like California, then a passing paperboy told me it was Cupertino, but that didn't tell me anything at all I leaned on Trahearne's horn until he stumbled out of the house across the street, his shirt in one hand, his shoes in the other, his tail tucked between his legs. Jesus Christ, it was like fucking in a car wreck. Nobody was hurt, but I had to endure a monsoon of abuse about trying to destroy a national monument.

The conductor and his passengers acted if I had run over a nun. The worst thing that happened, though, was that Fireball took to wearing a rhinestone collar and drinking Japanese beer. In four sentences, the narrator manages to malign San Francisco, tourists, foreigners and presumably gay culture. None of which is, in itself, even mildly funny. But by this point, we've learned that the things the narrator complains about the loudest are the things he loves the most. When he meets genuine assholes, wife-beaters and bigots and pimps, that's when the kidding stops and the book gets serious and, often as not, violent.

The page-by-page writing is top-notch, but unlike many good prose stylists, Crumley has also put together one of the best mystery plots I've ever read. Several times, this book seems to be reaching a satisfactory conclusion, only to have the puppet master jerk the string again and send Sughrue back into action.

These shifts in plot never feel gratuitous or tacked-on, however; this book is simply the rare combination of a tough-but-empathetic narrator with a great story to tell. There has to be one book to hold the crown of the best private eye story ever, and this one has as solid a claim as any other. Meet Private Detective C.

Private detectives are supposed to find missing persons and solve crimes. But more often than not Sughrue is the one committing the crimes — everything from grand theft auto to criminal stupidity.

All washed down with a hearty dose of whisky and regret. At the end of a three-week hunt for a runaway bestselling author, Sughrue winds up in a ramshackle bar, with an alcoholic bulldog.

This book stands out from many others - in a very good way. Pure entertainment with a great and funny storyline. Full of tongue-in-cheek humour, and without the political correctness we encounter today. Don't get me wrong. There is plenty of grit and encounters that will open your eyes, and probably not for the faint-hearted at points. You just have to read it. Oct 10, Erik rated it liked it Shelves: detailed-review.

It was love at first sight. The sharpness of the style and the voice made everything else seem dull. Both good and bad guys are morally ambiguous, as rotten as often as they are noble for reasons that are somehow both irrational and understandable. The plot meandered messily, as real life tends to do, rather than, e. What is it, exactly, that makes noir work?

What is it that appeals to readers? What is its heart and soul? Up until this review, my answer was always that good noir serves as a handbook for how to live in a fundamentally corrupt world. But that description never fully satisfied me. It doesn't quite capture noir's rain-slick soul of chrome and darkness. What else could it be? The femme fatale IS the heart of this genre. It may seem strange for me to claim that noir are, fundamentally, explorations of gender, but a good thinking should bear out that truth.

Murder over love. Murder over jealousy. Chivalry as morality. Loyalty in the face of irrationality. Noir are, essentially, masculine romances. Furthermore, they advance the hypothesis — whether consciously or not — that women are the engines of emotion, the massive planet-scapes of feeling, around which men orbit like fast-moving satellites. As such, the question for me, in evaluating The Last Good Kiss, is how good are the female characters?

How interesting are their interactions with the male characters? Shortly upon finding him, CW also takes on a second case, to find the long lost daughter of a bar-owner named Rosie. The book is, more or less, the investigation of this second case, which — as always in noir — ends up being connected to the first case.

In pursuit of these cases, we get all the oldie goldie female roles : The LOVER, which is the simplest of all noir roles. This is the woman the man sleeps with. And is usually also friends with. That is, she takes care of the boring domestic details.

Raising the children, balancing the budget, keeping up social appearances. Contrary to these mundane responsibilities, she is often depicted as extraordinarily beautiful. And she invariably leads a secret life, usually in the form of an affair with the protagonist. She is also often the primary culprit of murder or crime. Which leads us into the next role of the MOTHER, which is a borderline sinister character, reflecting the complex feelings a man must feel toward his mother: Grateful, even affectionate, yet always trying to escape her gravity well and become his own man.

Life is a perpetual storm, and our poor boat is constantly rocking, threatening to toss us into the cold, deep waters below. But in the distance, piercing through the mist and gloom, rises a pale slender tower, glowing bright, offering warmth and security… if only we can reach it.

A woman whose ethereal, undefinable, transcendent beauty promises liberation from the stormy uncertainties of life. An illusion, of course. He builds her up on such a pedestal that she has no hope of ever fulfilling his vision of her The lighthouse is the heart of every noir and the greatest, final statement of a given work of noir is the truth of the lighthouse: Does she turn out to be a murderess?

Does she turn out to be true? Or does she perish, destroyed by the machinations of this corrupt, stormy world? The Last Good Kiss is a very fine specimen of the noir variety. The style is sharp, the descriptions often beautiful whereas Chandler had a penchant for interior decoration, Crumley manages some wonderful descriptions of nature.

The characters are all morally grey, from a pedophile drama teacher to a stalkerish ex-bf to a mafia enforcer with an admirable stoicism. And the ending perfectly captures noir sensibilities.

Seriously, three stars aside, the ending is a superb kidney punch. The delightful mixture of convolution and inevitability in the plot is just a bit more artificial than other noir plots.

View all 7 comments. Nov 21, Jamie rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. Descriptions of this as a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Chandler are pretty spot on, though James Crowley plumbs some deeper emotional depths. Crumley is clearly a skilled wordsmith, and his perspicacious, wisecracking PI and war vet C. Sughrue brings to mind a kind of beer guzzling, whiskey binging Philip Marlowe. Seemingly lacking ambition, he becomes obsessed with the case of a girl gone missing ten years earlier.

We follow Sughrue on his quest, bar after bar, drink after drin Descriptions of this as a cross between Hunter S. We follow Sughrue on his quest, bar after bar, drink after drink to the point that the pages feel sticky with stale beer. All the while his obsession over the girl grows, seeing perhaps a chance at a kind of redemption for himself. Sughrue makes for a great character, and Crumley's style and talent for dialogue carry the story along smoothly.

While engaging and never dull, the plot feels well trodden and perhaps a bit predictable. Yet Crumley strongly imparts some deep melancholic impressions through the doomed, dysfunctional relationships of his much flawed characters, with themes of failed love and forgiveness that comes too little, too late.

Mar 13, Michael rated it liked it Shelves: crime , s , book-club-others , hard-boiled , pulp , detective. But this is not how it started out; he was hired by a woman to find her ex-husband, Abraham Trahearne before he drinks himself to death.

A confrontation in the bar that results in Trahearne being injured in hospital puts Sughrue in a position to look for this missing woman. Apart from that, you have the usual elements that make up a hard-boiled novel; alcohol, money, love, sex, power and violence. The narrative, while in a first person point of view, manages to switch between making the reader feel like they are in the same room trying to piece this mystery together, and then all of a sudden you are inside CW Sughrue head reading all his thoughts, emotions and memories.

This narrative, mixed with the cynicism and low regard to society is what I think makes this book so refreshing.

Then there is Betty Sue, who just has a sexual desire towards everyone in the book. Betty Sue hides her true self between layers of masks and other identities; she is running from her sexually exploitative time in San Francisco but it all comes back in the end. All of them fail to realise that the past defines the present. Admittedly I found myself being bored in parts of this book and wanting to skim read, but I persevered and found some interesting elements that stopped this from being a generic crime novel.

CW Sughrue, is an alcoholic ex-army officer turned private investigator and that dark past is what makes me want to keep reading the series, just to discover what he is running from.

The Last Good Kiss has been described as the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years, influencing people like Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and even Neal Stephenson; that alone is an impressive reason to check this book out. Mar 21, Aditya rated it really liked it. Crumley has been on my radar ever since I heard Dennis Lehane sing his praises. Other modern crime authors like Pelecanos played the same tune basically solidifying Crumley as one of the best kept secrets from casual fans of the genre.

So The Last Good Kiss had a lot to live up to and it does so and then some. I guess if ones name is James, one can't go wrong with writing crime fiction. See Elroy and Burke for further proof. Full time drunk, part time detective Sughrue picks up a throwaway job to Crumley has been on my radar ever since I heard Dennis Lehane sing his praises. Full time drunk, part time detective Sughrue picks up a throwaway job to find the missing daughter of a barmaid while locating his latest quarry - alcoholic author Do authors come in any other shapes and sizes?

The best stylists in the genre treat plot as the neglected step child and Crumley is no different. The identity of the missing daughter was obvious to me. The case is an excuse for Sughrue's odyssey through the seedy underbelly of organized porn. Crumley writes about wasted one horse towns and wasted lives with a fierce authenticity. Everything but words feel wasted in this narrative.

Sughrue makes loss and regret feel like the cost one pays for living beyond a certain age. While other crime protagonists drink as the genre demands it, Sughrue would feel incomplete without booze. Sughrue reminds me of a more beaten down, more cynical Philip Marlowe who manages to surprise himself with his occasional spurts of decency.

So many authors Ross Macdonald, Robert B Parker, Robert Crais have tried to copy Chandler's style - the silky simile laden prose and come out of it looking derivative and generic. Crumley however reminds me most of Chandler as he captures the spirit of his writing rather than the surface level style.

The supporting cast is also good. Trahearne is as narcissistic as a sociopath with the self awareness of a teenager. Both of his wives are sexpots that are great fodder for obsession and a bad option for love. I even liked the cameo characters which include a porn scholar and a pathetic acting coach who pretends to be posh. Almost every character jokes but none of them are happy. The Last Good Kiss is pretty funny for such a gritty and bleak novel.

There is no other author living or dead who can write a novel as gritty as this one and put in a beer drinking bulldog in the story with a straight face. Plus Crumley also offers sage advice that gives every self help book ever written a run for their money - I try to stay two drinks ahead of reality and three drinks behind a drunk.

The last one-fourth brings down the book. I realize Crumley was going for an ending more tonally apt to the rest of it but I just didn't buy the twist at the end.

The motivation behind it made no sense. The Last Good Kiss is a brilliantly written book which at its best promised to slide into top ten crime books I have ever read. The ending dampens some of my enthusiasm but make no mistake it earns it reputation as one of the last good crime classics.

View all 6 comments. Nov 15, Gerard Cappa rated it really liked it. I had 'The Last Good Kiss' lined up for some time and the post-Christmas bliss of semi-hibernation was the perfect time - I would read it in two or three days. Crumley's style had me hooked straight away; my kind of writer, sit back and enjoy the ride.

It was only after a couple of weeks that I realized it was taking a lot longer to get through this book than I had expected.

A 30 course nibble instead of a greedy feast. The plot rolled along nicely enough, the characters were big and bold, and I admired Crumley's style. So why did I find myself reading maybe only a chapter and leaving it aside for a few days until I disciplined myself to get back to it. And every time I did go back I found something else to enjoy. But this night, I rubbed my thumb over the faces locked beneath the brown translucent glare, all the weeping women, and I had no pity left for myself.

I had made my own bed and went to it to sleep, then to rise and do what I knew I had to do, to pay what I owed to the women. Were there just too many wasted drinking nights, too much drunken ramble, too much self pity? But how can I get too much of what I like? I still measure Crumley as being up among the best, if not quite making it to the top of the pile, and highly recommend 'The Last Good Kiss' to all PI devotees - just take it as it comes as Crumley's characters might and don't undermine it with your own high expectations.

Mar 08, Col rated it really liked it Shelves: c , , re-read , Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. Second time around it was maybe a wee bit better, but unforgettable? I doubt it, but you have to ask me in another Sughrue, our PI and main man is sent after an alcoholic poet and novelist by his ex-wife.

Eventually after some meandering bar-hopping, he catches up with him, provoking a quarrel in the bar where Trahearne, our missing author gets shot in the ass. With Trahearne in tow, most of the time, Sughrue digs deeper into the disappearance of the girl. He pieces together remnants of her past, from appearing in a pornographic movie, spending time at a now derelict and abandoned hippy commune and some sporadic contact with her absent father in the intervening period.

The quest seems to be concluded when our man is informed, at a help-centre for waifs and strays, of both the two and four-legged varieties, that Betty Sue died several years ago in a car accident.

With the death certificate in hand, Sughrue returns to Rosie and her bar I had to purchase this copy from Amazon having disposed of my first some years ago. Sep 08, Skip rated it really liked it Shelves: thriller.

Quality mystery about a private detective who is hired by his ex-wife to find an author, who seems to be out on a major bender. When CW finally tracks him down, he becomes obsessed with helping the bartender there find her daughter, who has not been seen in a decade since joining hippies in Haight-Asbury. The two story lines twist and turn, with many surprises along the way.

View 2 comments. The plot keeps moving, the characters keep drinking and the prose, my God the prose! It slides down like good whiskey. The best crime novel I've read in years. Twisty and convoluted mystery involving. W Sughrue a P. A smooth read dispersed with pockets of humour to alleviate what would have otherwise been a very bleak and dark story.

Another plus - I wasn't sure how it would all turn out until the last page was read. Well worth a look at. Readers also enjoyed. About James Crumley. James Crumley. James Arthur Crumley 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.

His book The Last Good Kiss has James Arthur Crumley was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays. Crumley was a grade-A student and a football player, an offensive lineman, in high school. With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability.

Find out more about OverDrive accounts. C W Sughrue. James Crumley. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Media The Last Good Kiss. Save Not today. The Mexican Tree Duck.

James Crumley. The Iron Wolves. Dancing Bear. A Stranger in the Family. Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. My Face for the World to See. Alfred Hayes. The Big Clock. Kenneth Fearing. So Brave, Young and Handsome. Short Story Masterpieces. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Mike Hammer: Complex Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. No Survivors. A Measure of Murder. Leslie Karst. Tooth for a Tooth. Frank Muir. Ark of Fire. From Hell: Master Edition. Natsume Soseki. A Brotherhood of Spies.

Mickey Spillane. Dead Space: Liberation. Ian Edginton.