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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not up to the standards of his best work,
By
This review is from: The Mexican Tree Duck (Mass Market Paperback)
James Crumley's "The Last Good Kiss" (1978) and "The Wrong Case" (1975) are two of the best hardboiled detective fiction novels ever written. With "The Mexican Tree Duck," Crumley brings back Private Investigator C.W. Sughrue from "Kiss." Alas, the results are not nearly as satisfying. Crumley is quite adept at creating effective moments. For example, there is a flashback here to Sughrue's service in the Vietnam War in which an officer is killed by a poisonous snake that I will not soon forget. There are numerous such moments in this book, but not enough to make up for a story that stretches credibility to the breaking point. The novel also lacks an effective villian, and many of Sughrue's foes here are the type faceless minions you'd expect in a James Bond movie. Overall, "The Mexican Tree Duck" is not a bad novel. Crumley at his worst is still a literary force who can put to shame a lot of the lightweights writing mystery novels these days. But I wouldn't recommend this as a first Crumley novel. Read one of his classics and get familiar with his unique genius first.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the mexican tree duck,
By jack craft (clarendon, tx USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mexican Tree Duck (Hardcover)
The first Crumley book I read was "the last good kiss" I have been hooked on crumley ever since. He is a chandlerisc writter who deftly out chandlers chandler. His black crime writting picks up in the 1970's where chandler left off in the fifties. What "the last good kiss" lacked in plotting focus came together completely in "the tree duck". a person simply has to love a guy whose cast of characters include :a drunk bull dog, a juke box with hank snow, twin fish peddlers who also have a sideline in gun running, and a filthy speed freak biker with a good heart and better woman.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Nam Vet's response,
By Echo Recon "Echo Recon" (SF Bay Area) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mexican Tree Duck (Paperback)
Okay, I gave you one credential. I served with E Recon 1/7th Cavalry. Crumley's a Nam vet too and in "One to Count Cadence" wrote one of the earliest novels that began to address that experience directly.Here in "Mexican Tree Duck" he creates the emotional landscape that is shared by many of us who "also served." Detective fiction has a subgenre that I might call "My Best Friend did it." Here that genre is mined to create the sense of abandonment and betrayal that many who served in Vietnam are ultimately heir to. My favorite scene is that of Serita's rescue. All the now old farts get it together and do exactly the tacticaly correct thing to do for what turns out, (for them), to be the inevitably wrong reason. Worse they fail to protect their unprotected flank and CW loses his love. Doing what your supposed to and getting screwed for it.... Well every Nam vet I know understands that. On top of that, (the not quite Masters in English is now speaking), what a technically proficient read! Crumley knows how to use this genre and spin his good tale. He has slipped in other books, but this was not one of them, and I will still read them every one.
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