Editions

The Mexican Tree Duck

The Mexican Tree Duck

'A fantastic road trip...wild, wicked, sweet, painful, courageous, outrageous, and obscene' New York Times

Never the most conventional of private detectives, C. W. Sughrue is called in to solve a far from traditional missing persons case. A beautiful woman has vanished, and Sughrue is set to be the next in a long line of people who have tried to find her: the FBI, her well-connected Republican husband, and – most worryingly – a group of South American drug dealers. And his only clue is a hollowed-out sculpture of a duck.

From Montana to the Mexican border, Sughrue embarks on a wild ride, as he finds himself in and out of trouble – and the beds of one or two women. And, as he runs from his memories of Vietnam, he ponders the meaning of loyalty and revenge. This is a journey like no other from the pen of James Crumley, the master of a generation of crime writers.

Reviews

  • The pleasures of Crumley's writing has always been in the characters, dialogue and incidental delights

    Independent

  • It's the journey, with all its wild, wicked, sweet, painful, courageous, outrageous and obscene encounters - which must somehow include those between man and duck - that will stay with the reader after the blood dries'

    New York Times

  • The pleasures of a James Crumley novel derive mostly from the zing of its characters, the bite of its epigrams, and a restless, almost manic vitality - prose on amphetamines

    Entertainment Weekly

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About the Author

James Crumley

James Crumley was born in Three Rivers, Texas and spent most of his childhood in South Texas. He served three years in the US Army before teaching at University of Texas at El Paso, University of Montana and University of Arkansas. He passed away in 2008. His private eye novels featuring Milo Milodragovitch and C. W. Sughrue are regarded as masterpieces of contemporary crime fiction, praised by Dennis Lehane, Ian Rankin and George Pelecanos. He was awarded the Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel and the CWA Silver Dagger Award.

James Crumley

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