He later earned a bachelor’s degree in history at what is now Texas A&M University in Kingsville, and earned a master’s degree in fine arts in creative writing at the University of Iowa in 1966. He attended Georgia Institute of Technology for a year before serving in the Army from 1958 to 1961. The son of an oil-field supervisor, Crumley was born Oct. He had a curmudgeonly sort of manner about him, but if you looked into his eyes you could quickly see that his eyes could look into your soul because he understood everything.” He said those who didn’t know the big and bearish author might not understand, “but this is a man who had a gigantic heart and loved the world and loved life. “He just never found a vast mass audience,” Penzler said, “and I wish I could tell you why. That’s true about all of Crumley’s work, said Penzler, who published the second novel featuring Sughrue, “The Mexican Tree Duck,” which won the 1994 Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel.Īlthough he never had a bestseller, Crumley developed a large cult following and received tremendous critical acclaim. I revered Raymond Chandler, but there was something about the beauty, the elegance of the prose that I think is the most important thing about Crumley.”Īnd, Penzler said, “although his series character was a drug-abusing alcoholic, he still had a romantic vision about doing the right thing.” “It had a poetical quality that I don’t think anybody else ever achieved. “It’s true,” Penzler told The Times on Friday. Otto Penzler, owner of Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and founder of Mysterious Press, has called “The Last Good Kiss” the greatest private-eye novel he ever read. “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

The last good kiss by james crumley