Dancing Bear

Rating:
Summary: Crumley's Best Novel
Review: A good book has you reading as quicky as possible. But when you finish you wish it would have lasted longer. That's true of this book. It still is after multiple readings.

I've read all his books and still can't tell the difference between Milo and Sughrue. All I know is that both characters have only a marginally superior sense of right and wrong compared to the "bad guys". People who like their heroes clean cut should read Robert Crais' Elvis Cole series.

His later books haven't been as good, but I still read them to keep up on the wanderings of the characters.

If you want a change of pace, read "One to Count Cadence", his first novel.

Rating:
Summary: Crumley's Best Novel
Review: Crumley hits all the bulls-eyes, but why are we doing this? The characters are etched like diamonds, but I never figured out what or who was directing the dance. "Dancing Bear" is 228 pages long. On page 221, Milodragovitch says "Hell lady, I'm still not real sure what this was all about." Milo's comment made me feel marginally better. How could I be expected to know when the hero didn't?

Milo obtains a break from his security job to take a well paying case from a wealthy elderly lady who seems to want nothing more than to find out what her neighbors are up to. It quickly transpires the "neighbors" are up to deadly games. Milo's new allies are over-interested in his inherited 3,000 acres of prime land, and one is the type of environmentalist we all love to hate. She is the Aquarian kind who has her eyes so firmly fixed on the "big" picture that she neither notices nor cares about the devastation she is wreaking while straining for her goal. Another ally is out to prove no man can ever resist her charms; all she has to do is put her mind to it. And these are his friends! You ought to see the bad guys! Trouble is we never are clued in to exactly what the motivation is for anyone but Milo. He just plain gets sick and tired of everyone trying to knock him off. Very understandable.

"Dancing Bear" is an interesting read because of the well-drawn characters. Crumley zeros in so well on an overweight, hard-as-nails, prostitute; we understand perfectly why Milo finds her an irresistible Red Hot Mama---not an easy task. The pace is fast, but we don't know where we are going, and the master crime/criminal is about as amorphous as having a vague discontent with General Motors. It was not the follow-up I expected to the brilliant "The Wrong Case."

Rating:
Summary: Target Practice
Review: Crumley hits all the bulls-eyes, but why are we doing this? The characters are etched like diamonds, but I never figured out what or who was directing the dance. "Dancing Bear" is 228 pages long. On page 221, Milodragovitch says "Hell lady, I'm still not real sure what this was all about." Milo's comment made me feel marginally better. How could I be expected to know when the hero didn't?

Milo obtains a break from his security job to take a well paying case from a wealthy elderly lady who seems to want nothing more than to find out what her neighbors are up to. It quickly transpires the "neighbors" are up to deadly games. Milo's new allies are over-interested in his inherited 3,000 acres of prime land, and one is the type of environmentalist we all love to hate. She is the Aquarian kind who has her eyes so firmly fixed on the "big" picture that she neither notices nor cares about the devastation she is wreaking while straining for her goal. Another ally is out to prove no man can ever resist her charms; all she has to do is put her mind to it. And these are his friends! You ought to see the bad guys! Trouble is we never are clued in to exactly what the motivation is for anyone but Milo. He just plain gets sick and tired of everyone trying to knock him off. Very understandable.

"Dancing Bear" is an interesting read because of the well-drawn characters. Crumley zeros in so well on an overweight, hard-as-nails, prostitute; we understand perfectly why Milo finds her an irresistible Red Hot Mama---not an easy task. The pace is fast, but we don't know where we are going, and the master crime/criminal is about as amorphous as having a vague discontent with General Motors. It was not the follow-up I expected to the brilliant "The Wrong Case."

Rating:
Summary: Well written but weakly plotted
Review: Dancing Bear updates the old-fashioned hardboiled detective genre but could have benefited from some old-fashioned plotting. Milo Milodragovitch is the dissolute antihero; a world-weary, bottom-of-the-barrel ex-cop/ex-PI reduced to scraping by as a security guard until events plunge him back into surveillance work and danger. He's got a kind heart and a self-destructive streak as wide as the Montana landscape that serves as the story's backdrop. Milo's adventures are fueled by copious quantities of booze, cocaine, casual sex, and violence, but it's all too half-hearted to convince or even entertain. Author James Crumley tells his tale in first person. Though he writes well he nonetheless fails to capture that peculiar `loser logic' that would allow the reader to buy Milo's often irrational behavior. Detective and the reader spend the bulk of the novel wondering what's going on, yet by the end it hardly seems worth the long, strange trip.

Rating:
Summary: Great Gonzo - What a Mystery!
Review: If the great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ever took to writing detective fiction, this is how it would most likey read. Crumley's P.I. Milo Milodragovitch is back from his best written work, "The Wrong Case." This story is far more violent and drug addled than the previous Milo adventure, and that weakens it somewhat. But its still a hell of a fun ride. Crumley's prose at times remind you of the Dr.'s "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Given that Milo also haunts the West, this is an apt analogy. Overall, this is an exellent hardboiled detective fiction novel that is not for the faint of heart.

Rating:
Summary: A whiskey sour and this book saves the holiday
Review: James Crumley seems sadly overlooked when people start namedropping Raymond Chandler's successors. Perhaps because Crumley puts himself and his stories so delibaretly outside the normal scheme, with detectives rather operating in Montana and Wyoming than on the sunny sidewalks of California. Crumley's finest moment is without a doubt the bitter "The last good kiss" but I still regard this work superior compared to what else you may find of your standard crime litterature.

Never one to picture a warm and healthy society Crumley introduces us to our anti-hero Milo as he has given up his work as a P.I. and started working as a security guard. What he has not thrown away with his former job is a drug and alcohol abuse that would kill even Dean Martin's liver. As Milo finds himself accepting to do a small and trivial case for an old lady that knew him as a child, he's tangled up in a web of violence, narcotics and everything else you would expect our northern states devoid of. Crumley's prose is accurate and poignant filled with dark satire and sometimes hilariously funny. The link drawn between him and Hunter S. Thompson is not as far-fetched as one might think.

The book seems to take of halfway with a violent twist that seems unnecessary and almost speculative. (Although nothing compared to Crumley's latest "The Mexican Tree Duck" which is a long tirade of doped-out violence.)

All in all the book turns out (as most of his novels) as a whacked-out "On The Road" story, told by a far more believeable character than the late Philip Marlowe.

***(*) stars on the barometer.

Rating:
Summary: Mangy
Review: Life sucks. The world sucks. People suck. Detective work sucks.

There--that's all you'll ever get from any James Crumley novel. So take the money you've saved and buy the Library of America edition of Raymond Chandler. That's what you really want.