Customer Reviews

Bordersnakes

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book turns on revenge. Milo Milodragovitch is after the man who stole his inheritance. C.W. Sughrue is after the guys who shot him and left him wounded outside a bar. The personalities of this unholy pair demand Old Testament styled punishment.

So begins a crimson swathe surging from Seattle to Texas to Mexico as Milo looks for his money, and Sughrue for the men who hurt him.

"Anybody who speaks badly of revenge ain't never lost nothing important" says Sughrue early in the novel. As the body count mounts, Crumley weaves a tale that blends Hollywood movie producers, Mexican drug lords, good cops, bad cops, and a string of violent men (as well as similarly violent women) while keeping the issue of revenge front and center, simmering.

Crumley's point of view bounces between Milo and Sughrue with each taking a first person turn spinning the yarn. In less capable hands, there'd be a clunky shift as the story passes one to the other. Crumley pulls it off seamlessly.

Bordersnakes is a fine novel. It's challenging, violence- filled and slightly philosophic without being preachy. It deserves a spot on your shelf.

Milo and Sugrue booze and snort and fight their way, around the Nexican border mostly, with a few stops in the Northwest. Milo is looking for someone who cheated him out of some money and Sugrue for some people who have tried to kill him. The plot is so convoluted that I lost track. I don't know if that means I suffer ADD but a lot of the time I could not figure out why the heroes were acting as they did. As Sugrue says "Every time we look for somebody we find them dead." Not only do they find them dead but they get accused (sometimes justifiably) of killing killing them. Great scene-setting, some stereotyped characters, a lot of violence, a lot of sex and a lot of fun.

Milo and Sughrue team-up to slay each others demons and solve their common mysteries. "Bordersnakes" is truly vintage Crumbley.

In this story, Crumbley ties-up some of his long running plot-lines: Milo's money and Sughrue's fear of relationships. Milo's long awaited inheritance is embezzled before he receives it, and the old war-horse sets out to find the banker who robbed him. On the way he enlists Sughrue's help. In the meantime Sughrue enlists Milo's help to find the Chicano assassins who left him gut-shot and for dead. Coincidentally, they find the two events are linked.

This is classic Crumbley with his gritty scenes and pithy prose. It would help for the reader to have read previous Crumbley novels like "One to Count Cadence" or "The Last Good Kiss" for background. However, this is two tough, old men taking on a bunch of very bad characters relying on a wealth of experience, firepower, and their ability to absorb tremendous punishment. Along the way they find time to get drunk, stoned, and laid--great stuff.

In places the story is a little weak. Crumbley may know his way around a MOSSBERG 500 BULLPUP, but laptops and cryptography are blackboxes and blackmagic. It seems like every gumshoe now needs a pet geek to move the plot along. Finally, Milo and Sughrue have always been much the same character. Putting the two of them together in the same story was a Sybil-like reading experience. Both characters speak with the same voice.

If you are a Crumbley fan read it. The only problem you will have is "who do you like better, Milo or Sughrue"? Otherwise, the uninitiated may find this novel a bit confusing.

With Crumley putting both Sughrue and Milo together in this novel, I thought it was a hoot. Both PI's getting/feeling older, the barb's and action is non-stop. Another great read, by the 'ol school master!!!

I have read all of Crumley's Sughrue and Milo mysteries (Last Good Kiss, Mexican Tree Duck, Wrong Case) up to Bordersnakes and I can say that there is a big drop-off in quality here. The dual mystery is nonsensical. There's a lot of wandering around and getting drunk and high and then random skips in the action where the completely baked detectives miraculously have three new leads to follow that wind up at dead ends. The story stops and starts. Also, Sughrue (my personal favorite of his two characters) is more passive in this one. Milo does most of the detective work, screwing and getting tortured on his own.

What I admire most about Crumley's writing is his vivid descriptions in setting the scene and his excellent sense of place. You really feel like you're in these scummy bars in west Texas and you can feel the grit of the sand on your teeth.

What is less impressive are his Rambo-like scenes of ultraviolence where these boozy old geezers win every fist fight and can shoot like marksmen. It's just unrealistic and absurd when placed side by side with the enjoyable moments of the detectives muddling through a complicated case. Also it's ridiculous that these 50-60 year old hard-living men have so many hot, young babes hitting on them. Not to mention the Hunter S. Thompson-style mountains of cocaine and drinks these guys put away would kill a younger, healthy man or at least render him immobile.

I have to say, however, that I highly recommend The Last Good Kiss to anyone who wants to understand why Crumley has earned his reputation as a successor to Hammett and Chandler.

James Crumley is almost frightening in the way he writes. He evokes things that most authors can only dream of. He is, in this humble man's opinion, the greatest living American author today. With Milo and Sughrue on the trail of decay, they step into, and fall over everything that our parents warned us about. His lyrical prose is haunting, and leaves me with a taste to read - like Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle-Crumley makes reading fun. Please Mr. Crumley give us more.

James Crumley's 1996 Bordersnakes is an example of the "hard-bitten", "tough guy" genre, and tells the story of two alcoholic ne'er-do-wells in search of a Mexican drug kingpin and killer. Crumley's plot and characters move with great vigor and dead-pan humor, and I found myself at the end of most chapters convincing myself I had to read "just one more." I do not expect the details of this book to stay with me for any length of time -- Crumley wrote entertainment, not literature -- but I will recommend this book to friends as enjoyable beach or fireside fodder.

This features both of Crumley's P. I's in the same story, partnered up, there's C W Sughrue and Milo Milodragovitch, both alcoholic, both drug abusers, both very nasty individuals.

Sughrue wants to find the person that shot him in the guts and Milodragovitch wants to find the person that stole his 3 million dollar inheritance. That's the story and both story lines are intertwined.

The only annoying bit is that's it's written in the first person and chops and changes between the two P.I.s, not a great trick to pull on your readers, Jim ( but he's dead now so he won't ever care what I think.)

It not very often that a entire novel is populated by totally unlikeable individuals but this is one of them, even our hero's aren't nice.

Its a normal Crumley, very violent and very well written, its not his best but a great rainy day read (and we have had a few lately).

The story ranges through 'dives' and various bedrooms of West Texas and L A and finishes south of the border.

A drug fueled adventure but a very very dark read.

Bordersnakes brings together two old cronies from Crumley's previous novels named Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue. Each has a score to settle and they join forces on a wild ride mostly through the Southwest and parts of California to seek vengence and violent retribution.

These good old boys are leather tough, hard living, often extremely violent and laugh out loud funny as hell most of the time! The relationship between the two is also fascinating in an offbeat sort of way. The plot seems to wander at times but I thoroughly enjoyed it as they encounter many interesting characters along the way and get themselves in some real funny situations as the story winds itself to a resounding conclusion that brings everything together.

This is the first book of James Crumley that I have read and will go back and read the previous ones for sure. I seldom read a book twice but this is one that I am sure I will revisit at some time in the future. It is that damn good!

Bordersnakes is a hell of a novel. Crumley is my favorite busted-knuckles writer. As anyone who has read his previous novels knows, Sughrue and Milo are deliciously twisted souls -- coked up, boozing hellhounds whom, for some reason, you can't help cheering on. It's great to have them together now in the same novel, and Crumley's to be credited for balancing the points of view as well as he does. Reading Crumley is a little like reading James Lee Burke on crank -- and so much the better for it