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Great Openings by James Crumley

Did James Crumley write the greatest opening to a crime novel of all time?

Author James Crumley in 2005, via Wikipedia
Author James Crumley in 2005, via Wikipedia

October 12, 2019, would have been writer James Crumley’s 80th birthday had he lived to see it. He died in 2008. Long before then, his books had developed not only a cult following but critical acclaim as well, and today, they still don’t have the recognition they have long deserved. I don’t remember when I found Crumley, or how. He was probably referenced somewhere when I moved to Montana on a list of Montana writers or perhaps on a list of crime writers everyone should know. Either way, it would have been around the time of his passing in 2008. I also started to go deep into Mystery/Crime/Thriller writing, seeking mentors in text at that time.  I found myself a copy of The Last Good Kiss right away at a defunct paperback exchange, and branched out from there, picking up copies of any of his books I found at used book shops whenever I found them.

Crumley seemed to have liked long openings too. His sentences are lush, but not long. There’s something of Steinbeck, even Faulkner in there, but not ponderous. Every bit as “Masculine” as Hemingway, but without the fragility of a man both attracted to women and repelled by them for their inherent threat to that sense of masculinity. I don’t get tired of Crumley. I can get hungover with him, though.   

So, today, writing from my home, a ramshackle place just outside Sonoma, California, I remembered one of the truly great openings in crime fiction, from The Last Good Kiss. It’s one of Crumley’s shortest and is fairly widely acknowledged as one of the greatest openings of all time. 

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” – The Last Good Kiss (1978), 4.06 avg rating — 6,112 ratings.

James Crumley’s Other Openings

James Crumley published eight novels in his lifetime. The openings for each of them is below, in chronological order. After the titles are the Goodreads numbers, a rating based on a 5-star system and the number of given ratings. (Even though I’m more of a LibraryThing man myself.)

“It’s funny how stories get around. Just the other day Captain Gallard mentioned that one about the car. He hadn’t spoken for several minutes, but had sat, staring out my window toward the sixteenth green running his fingers through his curly hair. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, drifting far from the Philippines, all the way back to Iowa and his childhood, as he told me about the mythic automobile of his youth.” One to Count Cadence (1969), 3.91 avg rating — 310 ratings. 

“There’s no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time. For nearly eighty years the only way to get a divorce in our state was to have your spouse convicted of a felony or caught in the act of adultery. Not even physical abuse or insanity counted. And in the ten years since I resigned as a county deputy, I had made a good living of those antiquated divorce laws. Then the state legislature, in a flurry of activity at the close of a special session, put me out of business by civilizing those divorce laws. Now we have dissolutions of marriage by reason of irreconcilable differences. Supporters and opponents were both shocked by the unexpected action of the lawmakers, but not as shocked as I was. I spent the next two days sulking in my office, drinking and enjoying the view, considering the prospects for my suddenly very dim future. The view looked considerably better than my prospects.” – The Wrong Case (1975), 4.01 avg rating — 1,423 ratings.

“We had been blessed with a long, easy fall for western Montana. The two light snowfalls had melted before noon, and in November we had three weeks of Indian summer so warm and seductive that even we natives seem to forget about winter. But in the canyon of Hell Roaring Creek, where I live, when the morning breeze is stirred off the stone-cold water and into the golden, dying rustle of the cottonwoods and creek willows, you could smell the sear, frozen heart of winter, February, or, as the Indians sometimes called it, the Moon of the Children Weeping in the Lodges, crying in hunger.” – Dancing Bear (1983), 4.08 avg rating — 843 ratings. 

“When the 3:12 through freight to Spokane hit the east Merriweather crossing, the engineer touched his horn and released a long, mournful wail into the wet, snowy air of our second early fall storm in western Montana. It sounded a hell of a lot like the first note of a Hank Snow ballad. I slipped the dolly from under the jukebox and plug it into the extension cord. When I drop a quarter into the slot, the large machine burped, the bubbling neon tubes glowed softly in the night, and the machine seemed to settle more solidly onto the railroad tracks.” – The Mexican Tree Duck (1993) – winner 1994 Dashiell Hammett Award, 3.74 avg rating — 835 ratings.

“Maybe it was the goddamned suit. Tailor-made Italian silk, as light and flimsy as shed snakeskin. Or maybe my whole new clean and shiny wardrobe looked strange under my battered old face. A thin knit shirt under the suit coat, woven leather loafers — without socks, of course — and a soft Borselino felt fedora that made me look like a Russian Black Sea summer pimp. Not bad, though, I thought. For a pimp.” – Bordersnakes (1996), 3.89 avg rating — 523 ratings. 

[In the Advance Reading Copy of Bordersnakes I happen to own, has the wonderful typo, “woven lather loafers.” Borsalino is also misspelled.]

Collection of James Crumley novels
The author’s collection of James Crumley novels

It was late November on the edge of the Hill Country, but I had learned very quickly that down here nothing was ever quite what it seemed. As I drove through northwest Austin that day, it might as well have been spring. The thin leaves of the pecan trees hadn’t turned. People still mowed their lawns in T-shirts and shorts. Or in this upscale neighborhood, watched various illegal aliens hustle like dung beetles back-and-forth across the thick Saint Augustine lawns through scattershot swarms of gnats. Overhead a brilliant afternoon sun floated in the rich blue sky polished cloudless by those soft southeastern breezes. A single buzzard overhead seem to be keeping a weathered eye on things. Winter seemed distant promise, bound to be broken. – The Final Country (2001), 3.89 avg rating — 412 ratings.

It was a lovely, calm Montana summer evening, a Saturday night after a long weekend of softball. The full moon rose blazing over Mount Sentinel, outlining the mall of the Hell Gate Canyon with silver fire. A streak of summer haze like a line of blood lay across the moon’s idiot face. The motel’s pool lights were reduced to dim glows. The hot tub shimmered around us like a pot of silver. The earlier August afternoon had been as hot as a fiddler’s bitch, and a molten slice of sunset still glowed with a hot golden flame along the jagged edge of the western horizon, but the early evening air had cooled quickly enough to draw vaporous swirls of steam from the heated water. The rising moon seemed to muffle the night for a moment. The only sounds are faint — the hiss of traffic over the Clark Fork bridge, the soft paddles from a gaggle of children in the pool, the romantic whispers of two young blond girls in oversize softball shirts leaning into each other, and the brazen chuckles squirting out of a coven of young men brewing drunken plots of disorder and early sorrow at a poolside table. – The Right Madness (2005), 3.69 avg rating — 456 ratings

What say you?

“You said he published eight novels, that was only seven.” You’re right detail-oriented reader. Crumley’s first novel, One To Count Cadence, is one I don’t own and couldn’t get a copy through inter-library loan quick enough for this post. I’ll update it later accordingly.

What are some of your favorite opening lines? Mystery, thriller, crime novel, or whatever.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.

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