I'm guessing around the time the novel was in preparation for release, he was battling Robert Mitchum as a villain in the remake of The Big Sleep.
While the Raymond Chandler classic was being retooled for the big screen, James Crumley was probably working under the hood of the private eye genre and fine-tuning this variation.
Not much later Boone passed away, but his rugged would have been perfect for Sughrue.
It's probably best that, despite reading high praise for it over the years maybe first in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or another publication at the time, I didn't read the first Sughrue adventure too early.
I checked out a paperback edition from the library but didn't get far past the fabulous first line about the beer swilling bulldog, Fireball Roberts. My bad.
Still, I don't think I would have appreciated Sughrue and Crumley's perspective without more of my own.
Montana detective Sughrue is tired and cynical as the book opens, and his tale is not one of straightforward investigation. It's a tale with twists and turns that follows the hell-raising detective's involvement with renowned hell-raising author, Abraham Trahearne, and his quirky family situation.
He's first hired to find Trahearne. That's before the book's action begins. We catch up as he's getting close.
While locating the author in a California dive, he's hired--for $87--by the bar owner to find her long, long lost daughter, but things aren't quite as simple or straightforward as they look.
Trahearne winds up shot in a barroom altercation, so while he's in the hospital Sughrue begins the legwork and learns the lost daughter, Betty Sue, went from high school acting into Bay Area porn, eventually put on a lot of weight and left town.
His later findings about where she went next don't please Mom much.
After Trahearne's healed a bit, Sughrue takes him home, meets his family which includes the current wife who hired Sughrue, the ex-wife who's still in love with him and Trahearne's wealthy mom.
The odd family setup's integral to the story as it moves along, and that soon involves second rate mobsters, more secrets about Betty Sue, gunplay and eventually an ending that's surprising and brutal. It's as you might expect from an unflinchingly unromantic depiction of the private eye, though maybe Sughure's last move is romantic and appropriate and a good fit for the narrative.
To say more than that all the hype for this novel is pretty accurate if you're in the right place would be too much of a spoiler. It's a great entry in the private eye realm of the mystery genre, and happily, though Crumley's passed away, he finished several more books in the Sughrue series over the years.
Impulse buy
