The Right Madness [Large Print] [Hardcover]

James Crumley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2005

An Edgar Award-winning Author

An ex-army officer turned Montana private eye, C. W. Sughrue carries a lot of scars. He wants nothing more than to lie low and try to block out the memories of the case that left a bullet wound in his gut and his marriage a wreck. The last thing he wants is to take on any business from his best friend, psychiatrist Will MacKinderick. But Mac is desperate.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"This is not my kind of job, man," Montana private eye C.W. Sughrue insists when his psychiatrist pal, Dr. William "Mac" MacKinderick, asks him to find out who surreptitiously duplicated minidisks containing his conversations with seven long-term analysis patients. But, as we soon discover in James Crumley's The Right Madness, this is precisely the sort of investigation toward which C.W. (for Chauncey Wayne) gravitates--filled with violence, sex, despair, and victims at a dime a dozen, not to mention enough booze and illegal drugs to floor a full-grown rhino.

Life hasn't treated Sughrue kindly over the years. Introduced in The Last Good Kiss (1978), this now late-middle-aged, Texas-born redneck and Vietnam vet was left for dead at the end of the Hammett Award-winning The Mexican Tree Duck (1993), and he almost bit it on several more occasions in the revenge fantasy Bordersnakes (1996). As Madness opens, C.W.'s younger lawyer wife, Whitney, has taken new employment in Minneapolis, and he's in serious denial about the consequences of this separation on their marriage. Instead, Sughrue loses himself in MacKinderick's supposedly "easy job"--witnessing a series of gruesome deaths (including the botched hanging of a professor's spouse and an artist's fatal tumble), chasing across the highway-striped West in search of some missing forensic evidence, being physically violated by a "blond giantess from Ukraine," and endeavoring to protect his client's redheaded wife from a couple of licentious FBI agents and her own self-destructive habits. Along the way, MacKinderick's blood-soaked sports car is found on a Washington state Indian reservation, and the doctor is presumed dead. But that only drives Sughrue on harder, as he tries, with help from seductive Butte attorney Claudia Lucchesi, to determine how all the pieces of this puzzle fit together. He's barely more successful at that task than readers will be. But then, Crumley's detective stories have always been stronger on character development, high-caliber action, literary wit, and lyrical exposition than on meticulous plot construction. If you've ever wondered how Hunter S. Thompson might have rewritten Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, The Right Madness provides more than a few clues. Watch out: bad craziness ahead. --J. Kingston Pierce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of Crumley's brilliant new hard-boiled detective novel, Montana PI C.W. Sughrue (introduced in the author's 1978 crime classic, The Last Good Kiss) is relaxing in a hot tub with his old buddy, psychiatrist William MacKinderick. Their team has just won the state championship in the over 50 softball league. Sughrue, whose body bears "more scars than a practice corpse," has even quit smoking. But when MacKinderick hires him to shadow some of his patients to see who may have taken personal files from his office, his old wild urges come roaring back. "I wanted another cigarette. So badly I couldn't remember why I had quit." Cigarettes, whiskey and cocaine all return to Sughrue's menu as one patient after another dies a gruesome death, and the reasons for the murders becomes less and less apparent. Soon Sughrue can threaten a bad guy with the warning, "I've got a hangover that would kill a normal man." Crumley shows his usual deft touch with poetic language (a shady lawyer boasts "a smile as innocent as the first martini") and humor ("I'm a private investigator, sir; I leave the blackmail to the lawyers"). The themes of nightmarish madness, betrayal and survival will glue readers to the page. Crumley remains one of the finest writers in the Raymond Chandler tradition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 437 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press; 1 edition (August 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786278765
• ISBN-13: 978-0786278763
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,470,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Same old, same old., May 25, 2005

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David E. Hintz (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Right Madness (Hardcover)

Maybe I'm Crumleyed out, but his loser lead characters storming through fascinating and horrific landscapes of human depravity (while scoring with every female along the way) are getting a little tired and ugly by now. I enjoyed the last book a lot and The Last Good Kiss is still a must read. However this one is for the Crumley completists only. Perhaps I prefer his Milo-lead books as opposed to the Sughrue led efforts (like this one). If you've read him before, you know what you're getting. If you haven't, start with the earlier efforts.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, May 23, 2006

By 

Owen Gilmore "owengmo" (San Mateo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Right Madness (Hardcover)

I read Crumley's "The Last Good Kiss," and that may have been his last good book. Anybody else may have gotten at least 3 stars but I think Crumley's gotten lazy. Any time Sughrue gets into a fix, he's always able to kick ass and fight his way out. Of course, any 70 year old Korean war vet should be able to take out a 30 year old FBI agent in top shape....sure. Believable. Hey, Crumley. This is supposed to be crime fiction, not fantasy.

The author also seems to have a voyeuristic fascination with young women and drugs, in no particular order.

Sex and drugs were used to good effect in "Kiss." Here, they're just cheap devices to spice up a basically very boring plot.

So much more could have been done with the illegal immigrant/white slavery/child abuse story, but that was never explored. Just good ol' Sughrue kickin' ass.....zzzzzzz.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Got to be a diehard Crumley fan for this one, February 26, 2006

By 

Jim Beam (Wayward, Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Right Madness (Hardcover)

If you've never read Crumley, read his earlier work in "Dancing Bear" or "The Wrong Case" before this one. They have the same sensibility and feel, but the stories are tighter and the books just work better.

Yes, this book is better written than a lot of hackwork you'll find out there in the crime and mystery genre, but after reading other stuff he's written I guess I'm holding him to a higher standard.