Murder For Love

james crumley

A significant portion of our cultural life is filled with lists: the year's best movies, top-ranked TV shows, bestsellers, and so on. It's all subjective and often useless, but it's also fun. We all know we should read every book so we can make our own decision about the best books of the year, and we should see every movie so we can decide for ourselves who are the best actors and actresses, and on and on. But in a busy life, this simply isn't possible, and the lists help to give us some direction.

In my own list of the best hard-boiled fiction, I have maintained for the past decade that the single greatest private-eye novel ever written is James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss. The title alone gives it a running start, and its first sentence is quoted by mystery aficionados more than any line except "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. "

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

This is James Crumley's first short story in twenty-three years and it is without question one of the finest crime stories ever written, filled with characters and texture enough for any serious novel.

– O. P.