Jim Crumley is dead.

Sad day.

I hadn’t read a word of his work until briefly after I met him at a Bouchercon in Chicago.  We were on a panel together.  I was aware he was one of the grand old men of contemporary noir, but knew little else.  Later that weekend, we had a brief conversation about not too much.  He was charming and funny.  Back home, I picked up a copy of THE LAST GOOD KISS and had one of those moments of revelation in which I realized that I was one of Crumley’s distant progeny.  Through secondary sources I had been greatly influenced by what he had done many years before.

His death is a loss.

But the books are still there.

READ THEM.

-c