C.W. Sughrue
Created by James Crumley

Speaking of the right madness...

Sprawling, impressionistic tales of sex and drugs and guns and rock'n'roll. The novels of James Crumley read like the literary equivalent of a Warren Zevon album, with more than a little Hunter S. Thompson's bad craziness jacked in. C.W. SUGHRUE is a redneck good ol' boy and sometime private eye who hails from Meriweather, Montana, with a taste for mind-altering substances, high-powered weaponry and a definitely non-linear approach to detective work. Gee, sounds a lot like Crumley's other Meriweather gumshoe, Milo Milodragovitch. In fact, although they never appeared in the same novel until 1996's Bordersnakes, they both frequently mention a former, nameless partner and now-and-then drinking buddy. It's not too hard a stretch to believe they're referring to each other here. And Crumley himself admits that C.W. and Milo "are friends, actually." (Winter 1994, TAD).

Still, there are differences. Both are veterans, but Milo did his time in Korea, while Sughrue did his stint in Vietnam, where he was court-martialled for "unintentionally" killing an entire Vietnamese family. And Milo is a basically a kind, generous guy, a bit smarter, a bit gentler, a bit less inclined to violence, Sughrue is a nasty son of a bitch, a loaded weapon with a natural-born mean streak. In fact, Crumley readily acknowledges, "Milo is my good side, Sughrue's the bad."

And don't be misled by the kinder, gentler C.W. who pops up in the latest novel, 2005's appropriately titled The Right Madness. Oh sure, at first it looks like C.W. has finally cleaned up his act, even quitting smoking. But taking on a case for a psychiatrist pal of his who plays with C.W. in an over-50 softball league (!) soon has him falling back into his old habits, with whiskey, cocaine, assorted painkillers and tobacco right back on the menu and boasting "I was a fistful of random trouble again."

It's not the first time C.W.s climbed on the wagon, or the first time he's fallen off in rather spectacular fashion. In Bordersnakes, we found C.W. almost settled down, with a wife and child. Well, until Milo showed up, anyway. but you've got to give the bastard credit for at least trying...

Crumley's books are among the most-respected private eye novels of the last twenty or so years and Crumley has earned a reputation as one of today's foremost writers of private-eye fiction, with C.W.'s debut, The Last Good Kiss (1978) generally considered a stone-cold classic of the genre. The Mexican Tree Duck received the 1994 Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel.

THE EVIDENCE

• "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 of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
  (theopening lines of The Last Good Kiss)
  
  
• "I've got a hangover that would kill an ordinary man."
  (The Right Madness)

NOVELS

• The Last Good Kiss (1978) ...Buy this book
• The Mexican Tree Duck (1993) ...Buy this book
• Border Snakes (1996; also featuring Milo Milodragovitch)...Buy this book
• The Right Madness (2005).. Buy this book

SHORT STORIES

• "The Mexican Pig Bandit" (1998, limited edition; 1999, Murder and Obsession)

CASTING COUCH

• Reader Nick Allen mentions that "In his autobiography, David Carradine talks about the fact that he came very close to playing CW Sughrue in a film version of The Last Good Kiss (I think Robert Altman was set to direct) but in the end, it never got made, due to studio politics if I recall right... "