The Right Madness

Patrick Anderson

Crumley is not for everyone. Besides Chandler, his novels, with their fierce mix of lyricism and violence, remind me most of Lehane's Kenzie/Gennaro series. (Lehane calls The Last Good Kiss a masterpiece.) But if you like Crumley's attitude, his cool view of human nature, his love of the drinking life and the West, and his scorn for authority, there's no one quite like him. He takes it to the limit, and The Right Madness is a good introduction to an important body of work.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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. Agent, Owen Laster at William Morris. 4-city author tour. (May 9) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

After a one-book rest, C.W. Sughrue returns as misanthropic as ever. Who does Sughrue like? Well, there's his 12-year-old son Les, his wife Whitney, and his teammate Dr. William MacKinderick. In Missoula, softball amounts to a religion, and hard-hitting shortstop Mac attends the same church. On the night Sughrue's latest descent into misadventure begins, he's actually in good spirits. The Old Goats, his team, has won the state championship in the over-50 division when suddenly Mac chills the mood. He has a p.i. job for Sughrue. There's been a break-in at the psychiatrist's office, and seven confidential patient files are missing. If they're not recovered, the potential for blackmail hovers like a hanging curve. Sughrue hesitates-after all, a previous investigation in Mac's behalf was messy, involving bloodshed and a near-death experience for the investigator-until a $20,000 fee closes the deal. As it turns out, this gig turns into an equally booze-drenched, drug fueled, sex-propelled exercise, during which Sughrue gets to beat up and blow away diverse members of the species he views so dimly, and at whose end the reader will be hard pressed to unknot a cat's cradle of plot lines. Representative Crumley (The Final Country, 2002, etc.) for those who like their hard-boiled noir nice and sour.