The Mexican Tree Duck [Mass Market Paperback]

James Crumley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1994

Ex-private eye C.W. Sughrue has been depressed, jobless and living in the basement of a morgue, but now a job has come up. He sets off on an odyssey of liquor, sex and gunplay to find a missing woman who has eluded the FBI and cocaine dealers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While the often furious action of Crumley's latest mystery takes place in the West, from Montana to the Tex-Mex border, the novel's heart beats in wartime Vietnam. There private eye C. W. Sughrue (first met in The Last Good Kiss ) and most of Crumley's memorable cast spent their formative years, learning about arms, reconnaissance and dope, and forging the relationships that hold them together or, in this tale that turns on betrayals, tear them apart as effectively as an AK-47. In Meriwether, Mont., Sughrue is hired to conduct a private search for Sarita Cisneros Pines, the missing Mexican wife of a slick Texas politician. Sughrue quickly runs up against the FBI, opposing bands of Mexican outlaws and some smooth American bad guys. As the bodies fall in increasing numbers, Sughrue falls, too--into bed with various women and in love with one or two; he enlists the help of other vets, including an ex-intelligence officer who is now a lawyer famous for defending drug lords. Sustained by booze and cocaine, driven by loyalty and revenge, Sughrue and his company gradually unravel the threads of sex, drugs, oil-interests and politics that lead to a final paramilitary campaign with a high body count. The occasional melodramatic note doesn't trip up the juggernaut action or knock Crumley's hard-guy prose off key. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Crumley's first novel in ten years is a blast from the past--and not the Eighties, either. Though there's a case and a client buried here somewhere--biker lord Norman Hazelbrook hires freewheeling Montana p.i. C.W. Sughrue (Dancing Bear, etc.) to track down his vanished mom, Sarita Cisneros Pines, wife of the Republican special envoy to Mexico--both C.W.'s investigative tactics (``Questions and answers don't mean shit to me,'' he says, preferring mind-altering chemicals and sincere, rapid sex with an informative bartender, Sarita's maid, and an undercover New Mexico sheriff) and the nature of the mystery (rival Mexican gangs swiping witnesses back and forth; links to everybody who ever served with C.W. in Vietnam; dirty drug deals and salted oil wells involving the DEA, the FBI, and lesser government agencies; a zillion double-crosses) give this manic, laid- back picaresque an unmistakably Sixties feel--like an MLA panel on Ken Kesey. Scruffy C.W. is obviously meant to be irresistible this time, and maybe he is, if he's what you've been waiting for. (First printing of 50,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (October 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446404071
• ISBN-13: 978-0446404075
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,760,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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, February 10, 2001

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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, August 2, 2000

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, June 7, 2005

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.