Rating: 
Summary: Top-notch Crumley. One of the real champs.
Review: Excellent and highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but...
Review: Excellently written. Great dialogue, adequate characterizations, but frankly, the motivations of some of the characters, particularly the alcoholic author, Trahearne, make little sense. Does he love his wife or doesn't he? Does he want her back or does he want her gone? In the end, the sad demise of the main character is totally gratuitous. She was already leaving and that was tragic enough.
Rating:
Summary: Modern hard-boiled detective...with a twist
Review: Gardner Dozois recommended James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss to me as the best hard-boiled detective novel written in the last ten years. With that kind of recommendation, I would have been hard-pressed to pass it up. And Dozois is correct, as far as I can tell. Crumley's C.W. Sughrue has that quality that I thought was lost when I finished reading the last Dashiell Hammett story. But Crumley isn't just playing off of Hammett and Chandler, although he is firmly in their tradition. Crumley is as post-modern as they come, and knows that life and people are as sleazy as anything James Ellroy or Andrew Vachss has put to the page (not to even mention the real thing). C.W. Sughrue is hired to track down a derelict author who's on a drinking binge by the author's ex-wife. What begins so simply quickly soon complicates--I can't quite explain how complicated it becomes, either. There's a point in the middle of the novel where I said to myself, "Well, that's it. We've had the set-up, the complication, a little goose-chase, a climax, and here we are." But I was only halfway through the book. Contrary to normal novel structure, Crumley leaves you hanging within the denouement while he sets up an entirely new climax not once or twice, but three times. Crumley has taught literature in Texas, Arkansas and Montana, and understands the directions recent fiction has taken. Although he's not about to give up the traditional, he has assimilated some of the modern tricks. The ending, in particular, is something that I doubt you would have seen in a previous decade. All in all, Crumley is a voice that is worth looking out for. On the basis of The Last Good Kiss, I plan to search out his other two novels and his short story collection. I recommend that you do, also.
Rating:
Summary: a winner!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Best detective novel ever written
Review: 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. Sughrue's El Camino speeds through the West--from Montano to California, then back again--like a bat out of hell, searching for a safe harbor. He finds it, at last, 'where he hangs his hangover.' Every now and then I run into someone who has read Crumley, and we wind up reciting lines from 'Dancing Bear' and 'The Mexican Tree Duck' for hours. I once read that Rolling Stone said 'The Last Good Kiss' is the last good hard-boiled fiction, and I truly agree.
Rating:
Summary: Controversial ending!
Review: I read this book because a reviewer raved about it -- but told his readers to skip the last chapter. With a recommendation like that, what could I do but read the entire book, especially the last chapter? I'm still undecided about whether I approved of the ending, but I'm glad I disobeyed the reviewer and read it anyway. This is as much a character study about its detective as it is a mystery. It also lets the reader visit a side of America most of us have never seen. Be warned that this novel can be grim. Alcohol isn't just prevalent, it's as vital as air to these people. These characters could drink Nick and Nora Charles under the table, and would probably pick their pockets after they passed out. Anne M. Marble Reviewer, All About Romance (I have diverse tastes :->)
Rating:
Summary: A classic and Crumley's finest
Review: James Crumley, here in his second detective novel (and only his third book) penned a bona-fide classic of the genre. Let me clarify further - not only is this one of the greatest mystery novels ever written, it is also one of the best novels of modern fiction written in the last 20 years. Crumley shows in this novel his unparalled prose style that in many passages reads like the best poetry. The opening line to the book is justly famous, both lyrical and tragic in its tone, but throughout the book Crumley does what a few truly great writers are able to do - to construct passages that transcend their time and place and possess a beauty that transforms prose into poetry. Crumley with this book established that he had no contemporary equals; only Chandler in a few of his books is able to equal or surpass Crumley for unabashed poetic brillance. (In fact a close reading of The Last Good Kiss shows it's indebteness to Chandler's The Long Good Bye.) Many of the other reviews have touched upon the book's cynical and tragic elements - which are certianly there - but this only helps to contrast with the beauty of the writing.
Rating:
Summary: Everything You Want in A Story
Review: Never having read raymond chandler I can't comment on comparisons to him, but I was blown away by this book. Crumley's style is so easy to read and yet contains so much underlying depth and emotion that you don't appreciate how good the story and writing is until your done. The author's brings home the story in about half the amount of pages that today's so called top author's would need. Although there are really no direct connections the book reminded me in some ways of the movie pulp fiction. The time setting of the story in 1979 fits in perfectly with the many themes of the book - confusion, searching for an unreachable goal, and yet gritty realism. The best way to describe this book is that it is filled with honest emotion. Read it and you'll understand.
Rating:
Summary: great schlock!!
Review: No, it's not great literature but if you want a weekend's entertainment without turning on the TV then this is it. Better than your average beach book but NOT a no-brainer, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Rating: 
Summary: Dirda Named It a Favorite: I don't
Review: On the advice of Michael Dirda of the Washington Post, I read this novel(Mr. Dirda named it one of his favorite American novels since 1970) as I've so often before read the novels and fiction Mr. Dirda thinks worthy of a reader's time. As I made my way through it, though, I had to face it, had to reach down deep and tease out a festering dissenting voice, stop and heed my internal critic: This book, at best, is really not that engaging, more of a chore to read than a pleasure, and rather shallow overall; it does not, as I was lead to believe, boast any real depth of narrative - what depth we do see is not in the drawing of the characters, but in the measuring out of drams of aqua vitae and beers, always on ice and handy ---Miraculous! It's too mired down in the slogging passage of the two toss pots and the women are all fantastically ironic and fey; unpredicatble and dangerous, capable of causing either great life change for the protagonist or certain "demise." That's new. Also, sex, porn, the skin trade pins the whole tale up and I must say that such sleaziness gets old rather quick. I wanted to embrace it and herald it, wanted to agree with Michael D. and shake my head in adoration after reading a sentence that dished a gut-punch or danced me off to a lyrical heaven, but instead I could only shrug and think that I've read this before; and it's been done better. Read Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, for the real thing. Try Andrew Vacchs if you want sleaze and retribution.
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