Bordersnakes

Rating:
Summary: Put me to sleep...zzzzzzz
Review: I often read to relax before bed. This book was exceptionally good at not holding my attention and after a paragraph or two, I nodded off blissfully.

Milo is more than an anti-hero. He's a cretin.

Crumley is more than a bad writer. He is a coarse writer. The denouement is unbelievable in the extreme.

Rating:
Summary: So good that its spooky
Review: James Crumley is almost frightening in the way he writes. He evokes things that most authors can only dream of. He is, in this humble man's opinion, the greatest living American author today. With Milo and Sughrue on the trail of decay, they step into, and fall over everything that our parents warned us about. His lyrical prose is haunting, and leaves me with a taste to read - like Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle-Crumley makes reading fun. Please Mr. Crumley give us more.

Rating:
Summary: fun beach or fireside reading
Review: James Crumley's 1996 Bordersnakes is an example of the "hard-bitten", "tough guy" genre, and tells the story of two alcoholic ne'er-do-wells in search of a Mexican drug kingpin and killer. Crumley's plot and characters move with great vigor and dead-pan humor, and I found myself at the end of most chapters convincing myself I had to read "just one more." I do not expect the details of this book to stay with me for any length of time -- Crumley wrote entertainment, not literature -- but I will recommend this book to friends as enjoyable beach or fireside fodder.

Rating:
Summary: Smart, Sassy and Seriously Sublime!
Review: James Crumley's 1996 Bordersnakes is an example of the "hard-bitten", "tough guy" genre, and tells the story of two alcoholic ne'er-do-wells in search of a Mexican drug kingpin and killer. Crumley's plot and characters move with great vigor and dead-pan humor, and I found myself at the end of most chapters convincing myself I had to read "just one more." I do not expect the details of this book to stay with me for any length of time -- Crumley wrote entertainment, not literature -- but I will recommend this book to friends as enjoyable beach or fireside fodder.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Crumbley
Review: Milo and Sughrue team-up to slay each others demons and solve their common mysteries. "Bordersnakes" is truly vintage Crumbley.

In this story, Crumbley ties-up some of his long running plot-lines: Milo's money and Sughrue's fear of relationships. Milo's long awaited inheritance is embezzled before he receives it, and the old war-horse sets out to find the banker who robbed him. On the way he enlists Sughrue's help. In the meantime Sughrue enlists Milo's help to find the Chicano assassins who left him gut-shot and for dead. Coincidentally, they find the two events are linked.

This is classic Crumbley with his gritty scenes and pithy prose. It would help for the reader to have read previous Crumbley novels like "One to Count Cadence" or "The Last Good Kiss" for background. However, this is two tough, old men taking on a bunch of very bad characters relying on a wealth of experience, firepower, and their ability to absorb tremendous punishment. Along the way they find time to get drunk, stoned, and laid--great stuff.

In places the story is a little weak. Crumbley may know his way around a MOSSBERG 500 BULLPUP, but laptops and cryptography are blackboxes and blackmagic. It seems like every gumshoe now needs a pet geek to move the plot along. Finally, Milo and Sughrue have always been much the same character. Putting the two of them together in the same story was a Sybil-like reading experience. Both characters speak with the same voice.

If you are a Crumbley fan read it. The only problem you will have is "who do you like better, Milo or Sughrue"? Otherwise, the uninitiated may find this novel a bit confusing.

Rating:
Summary: A few bodies along the way
Review: Milo and Sugrue booze and snort and fight their way, around the Nexican border mostly, with a few stops in the Northwest. Milo is looking for someone who cheated him out of some money and Sugrue for some people who have tried to kill him. The plot is so convoluted that I lost track. I don't know if that means I suffer ADD but a lot of the time I could not figure out why the heroes were acting as they did. As Sugrue says "Every time we look for somebody we find them dead." Not only do they find them dead but they get accused (sometimes justifiably) of killing killing them. Great scene-setting, some stereotyped characters, a lot of violence, a lot of sex and a lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: This is what it's all about
Review: No redeeming value in this novel. Hateful characters. Convoluted plot. Lousy dialogue. Save your money...and your time.

Rating:
Summary: Vengance as a dish best served cold
Review: This book turns on revenge. Milo Milodragovitch is after the man who stole his inheritance. C.W. Sughrue is after the guys who shot him and left him wounded outside a bar. The personalities of this unholy pair demand Old Testament styled punishment.

So begins a crimson swathe surging from Seattle to Texas to Mexico as Milo looks for his money, and Sughrue for the men who hurt him.

"Anybody who speaks badly of revenge ain't never lost nothing important" says Sughrue early in the novel. As the body count mounts, Crumley weaves a tale that blends Hollywood movie producers, Mexican drug lords, good cops, bad cops, and a string of violent men (as well as similarly violent women) while keeping the issue of revenge front and center, simmering.

Crumley's point of view bounces between Milo and Sughrue with each taking a first person turn spinning the yarn. In less capable hands, there'd be a clunky shift as the story passes one to the other. Crumley pulls it off seamlessly.

Bordersnakes is a fine novel. It's challenging, violence- filled and slightly philosophic without being preachy. It deserves a spot on your shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Not My Cup Of Crime...
Review: Unfortunately. this is one of those cases I fell prey to a snazzy jacket design and paid for it with a few hours of my life. It's not a bad crime story, but the plot is overly convoluted, and it never really gets better than beach or plane reading. Prospective readers should be aware that the two main characters, Milo and Sughrue, are from earlier Crumely works, and without reading those (The Wrong Case, Dancing Bear), one is liekly missing all kinds of background and development that might make them more interesting here. Of course many readers, myself included, found nothing particularly compelling about a pair of 50+-year-old boozers and drug users. The story, which concerns the duo's hunt for a Mexican drug lord and killer, takes place in south Texas and New Mexico, an area I know little about, which also made it a little hard to get into. The narrative is first-person, switching between the two characters in alternating sections, which might have worked had the two characters hadn't been so similar. Next time I won't be suckered by the jacket and will stick to the good stuff, like George Pelecanos.

Rating:
Summary: One of the worst books I've ever read.
Review: Without a doubt this is one of the worst books that I've ever read. The writing is poor, the plot weak. As I read this book I found myself continually trying to figure out where this particular paragraph fits into the story. It's as if the author didn't know how to tie thoughts together so he didn't even try.

I see from another review that the two main characters were from previous books, and perhaps reading those would have helped with some background on them.

But even so I find it hard to believe that knowing their background would have made the book any more enjoyable.

Many times I set the book down thinking I would just throw it away, but I'm very persistant and kept reading thinking that the book HAD to get better. Unfortunately it didn't.

The book ended and I was left trying to figure out what happened. In the end I got nothing out of this book but lost time.