The Final Country
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Author(s) | James Crumley |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Mysterious Press |
| Honors | |
| Milo Milodragovitch is back in Texas, running the bar of his dreams and trying to do a little private investigating on the side. His relationship with his woman is on the rocks ever since his overnight fling with the classy, scotch-drinking Molly McBride. Now, she’s persuaded Milo to help her search for and bring to justice the lowlife who raped and murdered her sister. A simple stakeout turns hideously violent when it’s discovered that Molly’s prey is no ordinary miscreant, but a brute with major political connections. Soon Milo is calling on connections of his… | |
Milo Milodragovitch is back in Texas, running the bar of his dreams and trying to do a little private investigating on the side. His relationship with his woman is on the rocks ever since his overnight fling with the classy, scotch-drinking Molly McBride. Now, she’s persuaded Milo to help her search for and bring to justice the lowlife who raped and murdered her sister. A simple stakeout turns hideously violent when it’s discovered that Molly’s prey is no ordinary miscreant, but a brute with major political connections. Soon Milo is calling on connections of his own, including shady computer geniuses, taciturn bodyguards, and his old pal C.W. “Sonny” Sughrue, in a plot that takes him from sweaty, dusty Mexico to the frigid mountains of Montana.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
It’s been too long since James Crumley’s last Milo Milodragovitch adventure, but the wait was worth it. The Final Country is a fully satisfying read with plenty of action, even more sex, and superb characterization.
“A chase after money and revenge had brought me to Texas, and a woman had kept me here,” Milo explains. But trying to salvage a love affair, keep his PI business going, and run a tavern (whose real business is laundering drug money) hasn’t kept trouble from following Milo—or maybe it’s the other way around. When a man kills a drug dealer right in front of him, Milo can’t help but track the shooter down, if only to keep the Texas cops from railroading him into the death chamber. Soon one beautiful woman frames Milo for the murder of a well- connected Texan, and another one with ties to both killings disappears, setting up the intricately plotted action of this fast-paced thriller.
Crumley’s narrative gifts and poetic talents set this crazy-funny mystery apart. Milo is a consistently interesting protagonist, especially here, as Crumley depicts him in the fullness of middle age, a hard-boiled, bruised, and battered dick who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believes in the redemptive powers of love—not to mention liquor, cocaine, and sex. Texas may not be Milo’s natural habitat, but it’s a big enough backdrop for his unique talents, and for Crumley’s, too. —Jane Adams
Barnes and Noble
James Crumley caught the attention of crime-fiction aficionados as a promising new writer with his 1975 debut, The Wrong Case, a memorably sleazy thriller featuring hard-drinking private investigator Milo Milodragovitch. Three years later he delivered on that promise with his masterpiece, The Last Good Kiss, which has become one of the seminal PI novels of the late 20th century.
Crumley published only three more novels (Dancing Bear, The Mexican Tree Duck, and Bordersnakes) over the next 18 years and has come to be known as an author who takes his time to perfect his craft, although none of his later novels matched the level of his early work. Given that context, The Final Country is an unexpected pleasure—a fierce, funny, wickedly well written novel, easily Crumley’s finest since The Last Good Kiss.
The Final Country brings back Milo Milodragovitch, who has stumbled into a prosperous, peaceful late middle age and hates every minute of it. He owns a bar and a motel in the Texas Hill Country, has more money than he ever really wanted, and has entered the terminal stages of his latest long-term relationship. To counteract the boredom that has permeated his life, Milo resumes his interrupted career as a private eye. While tracking down a runaway wife, he meets—and shares a drink with—an on-the-lam ex-con named Enos Walker, who has just gunned down a drug dealer in the Over the Line Saloon. Milo feels an atavistic sympathy for Walker, who might have acted in self-defense. For various complex reasons, he attempts to follow Walker’s trail and to investigate his criminal past. That investigation threatens to unearth some long-buried secrets and also threatens the security of some ruthless, highly placed people.
Milo’s quest, which seems simple at first, widens exponentially, gradually encompassing a vast, interconnected web of lies, crimes, and betrayals that reach back 20 years into the past. His inquiry takes him from Texas to Las Vegas to Montana and involves a vividly drawn cast of characters on both sides of the law. Among them are a corrupt district attorney and his lethal twin, a multimillionaire with a questionable past, a slightly kinky acupuncturist, and a number of Milo’s own closest associates. In the course of his investigation, Milo nearly dies on a number of occasions, ingests heroic quantities of alcohol and cocaine, and endures more physical punishment than most of us will ever experience. By the time the last shot has been fired and the final secret illuminated, the 60-year-old Milo has changed for good, becoming an old, virtually unrecognizable man.
The Final Country is a lurid, over-the-top account of violence, retribution, and greed. In lesser hands, it might have collapsed into parody, but Crumley holds it together with his effortless mastery of setting, character, and mood, his drop-dead accurate dialogue, and his rhythmic, flexible prose.—(Bill Sheehan)
