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The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue #2)

James Crumley

Paperback | Pages: 256 pages

Rating: 3.74 | 881 Users | 65 Reviews

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Original Title:	The Mexican Tree Duck
ISBN:	0446677914 (ISBN13: 9780446677912)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	C.W. Sughrue #2
Literary Awards:	Hammett Prize (1993)

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”It wasn’t a party that a Republican could understand--the marijuana smoke sweet on the air, the occasional cocaine sniffle, cold Mexican beer, good food, great conversation, and laughter--but a Parisian deconstructionist scholar might find it about as civilized as America gets. Or at least the one I met, who was visiting at UTEP, maintained. Somewhere along the way, he claimed, Americans had forgotten how to have a good time. In the name of good health, good taste, and political correctness from both sides of the spectrum, we were being taught how to behave. America was becoming a theme park, not as in entertainment, but as in a fascist Disneyland.”


The Swirls around him are a good indication that Crumley is composing this book in his head.

The novel opens with C.W. Sughrue hauling his jukebox out to the train tracks with the express purpose of watching the 3:12 freight train explode it into a thousand pieces.

Tequila might be the problem.

Okay, Tequila was for sure involved.

This jukebox had given him many hours of entertainment over the years and would have given him many more except for the tasteless bastard who comes around to shuffle the records. He had the audacity to replace all the Hank Snow songs, rendering the jukebox absolutely worthless.

Train fodder.

One last bit of entertainment, and then he can start counting down the minutes until his head starts to feel like an overripe melon getting ready to split under the hot noon day sun. He might even have regrets.

Sughrue lives in what used to be a morgue. His buddy from Vietnam, Solly Rainbolt, owns the building and lets him stay there in exchange for small investigative favors. Sughrue has retired from the P.I. game and become a bartender who happens to own a bar. He didn’t buy it. The bar was more like gifted to him as the owner made tracks South.

It is hard to stay retired when one is flat busted.

His friend, Norman, needs him to find his mother, so after some hee-hawing back and forth, several lines of coke, and a few beers for stabilization, Sughrue finds himself back on a case. His only lead takes him to the Tex-Mex border, and that is when what should make sense begins to make no sense. It doesn’t take him long to realize that mommy dearest is married to a slick Texas politician, and drug lords and the FBI are competing to find her first. How could a woman so beautiful be in so much trouble?

He enlists the aid of some of his old pals from Vietnam who may not miss Vietnam, but they do miss the heady tang of violence and the comradery of having a mission. Sughrue finds a statue of a Mexican Tree Duck which becomes the Maltese Falcon of this story.


Mexican Tree Duck

And just like in Red Harvest the bodies start piling up only faster because instead of revolvers everyone in this story has left over firepower from the war. James Crumley sprinkles the text with hardboiled dialogue that could peel wallpaper.

”Just assume the position, asshole, or they’ll be serving romaine and pepper-belly brains tonight.”

It just goes to show know your restaurant, know your restaurant well.

There is wild, passionate, last night on Earth type sex involving an undercover New Mexico Sheriff in one bizarre case. There are double crosses that intersect other double crosses making them...well...I’m not sure. Do they multiply or cancel each other out? There are Vietnam flashbacks. There are DEA agents, FBI agents and agents from government agencies that we aren’t supposed to know exist. Just to keep himself straight Sughrue is forced to keep lighting up his brain like a pinball machine on tilt with a steady supply of nose candy. There are a hundred reasons why Sughrue should just return to Montana and maybe buy a record player and a pile of Hank Snow records, but he has been knocked around one too many times and now revenge is riding in the sidecar with his own pecular sense of loyalty.

It has been decades since I’ve read a James Crumley. I know at one time I was saving them because there are so few, but I never intended to wait this long to read the next one. Funny how that happens when a guy has a few thousand books at his fingertips to pick from every time he goes into his library to grab that next book. Reading back through this review I know it sounds like this is just another Rambo Vietnam Vet story, but there is certainly literary value. Crumley is one of those guys who was being read by the spinner rack reader as well as the college professor. He knows how to compose a sentence and certainly there were times when amongst the chaos of the plot when I had to take a moment and let a sentence dangle an extra few seconds on my tongue.

List Epithetical Books The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue #2)

Title	:	The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue #2)
Author	:	James Crumley
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 256 pages
Published	:	October 1st 2001 by Mysterious Press (first published 1993)
Categories	:	Mystery. Crime. Fiction. Noir. Hard Boiled. Detective. Thriller

Rating Epithetical Books The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue #2)

Ratings: 3.74 From 881 Users | 65 Reviews

Piece Epithetical Books The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue #2)

This was disappointing after The Last Good Kiss. There are good scenes, and the ending is satisfyingly convoluted, but this didnt have the hook that Crumleys earlier book did. Maybe it was the over reliance on Sughrues drug and alcohol use (which never slowed the 50+ year old down) or that every female was entranced by him that made this seem stale.

The Mexican Tree Ducks heart beats in wartime Vietnam through the eyes of Crumleys C.W Sughrue; but is set in Tex-Mex. Sughrue is tending bar in Montana; but then hired to conduct a private search to find a missing mother by an old war buddy. In his search, Sughrue, assisted by a pair of Vietnam War buddies (an alcoholic postman and a cop dying of cancer) uncovers links between kidnapping, drug smuggling, oil rustling and dirty politics. The Crumley characters rarely miss an opportunity to

It wasnt a party that a Republican could understand--the marijuana smoke sweet on the air, the occasional cocaine sniffle, cold Mexican beer, good food, great conversation, and laughter--but a Parisian deconstructionist scholar might find it about as civilized as America gets. Or at least the one I met, who was visiting at UTEP, maintained. Somewhere along the way, he claimed, Americans had forgotten how to have a good time. In the name of good health, good taste, and political correctness from

All of the Gonzo, none of the class. Rambling, confusing, almost incomprehensible in places. Still some great passages and the kind of book that 20 year old me absolutely loved, but not a patch on either The Last Good Kiss or The Wrong Case, both of which stand as some of my favourites of all time.

The Last Good Kiss made me wonder how is Crumley not better known, the answer to that is The Mexican Tree Duck. The biggest problem is Crumley appears as drunk as his protagonist Sughrue. The narrative's tone reminiscent of a drunk's ramblings, varies wildly from comic caper to existential bleakness. His writing retains the occasional bursts of brilliance. But the plot is not as much the neglected runt of the litter, as it is the abused bastard that ruined the family name.The story starts of

The Chandler meets Hunter S Thompson thing is a pretty well established comparison for people discovering the work of James Crumley but having thus far refused to read Thompson I would like to mention that this second outing for See Dubya Shoog-rue plays quite a lot like a more literary, less James Bond-esque, more fucked up post-Vietnam, less Travis McGee version of Don Hamilton's Matt Helm series. Sughrue derails a train and almost single handedly storms a drug compound before the case has

Reading a Crumley book feels like getting to hang out with the grizzled bar keep in a Montana mountain town. He transports you into war stories and twisting mysteries that are altogether captivating. This second book with CW Sugrue is a page turning and fun trek through the American West and down to the Mexican border. Crumley leaves you confused at points only to reveal what characters understood pages ago later on and then set up another twist just when you have your bearings.