Detective Milo Dragovitch spends too much time boozing until he gets caught up in a case involving two-bit criminals and an old lady on the run. His friends call him Milo. No one has ever called him Bud except his father, long dead, and now Sarah Weddington, stirring painful memoires and offering him his first case since he abandoned his private practice and took a job marking time on the night shift for Haliburton Security. The case seems almost too easy, hardly worth the large fee, just to satisfy this old woman's ...
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Detective Milo Dragovitch spends too much time boozing until he gets caught up in a case involving two-bit criminals and an old lady on the run. His friends call him Milo. No one has ever called him Bud except his father, long dead, and now Sarah Weddington, stirring painful memoires and offering him his first case since he abandoned his private practice and took a job marking time on the night shift for Haliburton Security. The case seems almost too easy, hardly worth the large fee, just to satisfy this old woman's curiosity. But things are soon exploding all over the place and Milo is turning up grenades, machine guns, a kilo of marijuana and a bag of coke . . . and suddenly Milo is on the run.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good jacket. A nice hardcover in a protective Mylar sleeve with a crisp dust jacket, a tight binding and an unmarked text. Stated 1st editionFrom a private smoke free collection. Shipping within 24 hours a tracking number and delivery confirmation.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Very Good jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. This is a Fine copy of Crumley's fourth novel. Black paper-covered boards with a black cloth spine; titling in copper. Clean text; 228 pages. The dustjacket is unclipped and complete, but there is a closed tear and a "ding" to the front cover. In an archival plastic protector. [Note: due to a computer crash, this book may appear with the inventory number 000655]
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Seller's Description:
Paul Bacon. Fine in Near Fine jacket. This is a Fine copy of Crumley's fourth novel. Black paper-covered boards with a black cloth spine. Titling in copper on the spine and front cover. Clean text; 228 pages. The dustjacket has a touch of wear on one corner; some creasing internally on the flaps. Else, Fine. In an archival plastic protector.
If you like your detective fiction raw and nasty, James Crumley's Dancing Bear is your cup of meat. Its protagonist Milo Dragovitch pursues two cases at once, which quickly entwine him in a shipment of cocaine, poachers, stunning and disaffected characters, grenades, AK-47s, and a slew of corpses strewn across the macho backwoods of Montana. As the detective sinks deeper into this morass, he spends as much time snorting "toots," belting shots of peppermint schnapps, and skirt-chasing (though that puts it politely) as he does sleuthing.
The violent, toxic nihilism of this environment may be familiar to fans of Hunter Thompson. Dragovitch is a mess of compulsions. Crumley doesn't quite have Raymond Chandler's way with a metaphor, but it's hard to argue with Crumley's intimacy with place, however over-the-top. I'm of two minds. My preference is for a writer like Ross MacDonald, Chandler's true heir who with utter restraint, was able to depict Southern California as a blasted moral landscape. Crumley is doing something similar, but using a blowtorch to do it.