James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
WINNER OF THE DASHIELL HAMMETT AWARD
One night up in Montana, C.W. Sughrue sets his seedy bar's pricey jukebox in front of an oncoming freight train. When predictable results ensue, he needs to find a way to make some money and pay back the jukebox company. So even though Sughrue's officially retired from P.I. work, he picks up one small-time case involving some kidnapped fish. That fishy trail leads to a much bigger case involving a Texas politician's kidnapped wife, a valuable piece of pre-Columbian pottery, and a single mother who packs guns and stolen goods in her infant son's diaper bag.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 9781101971482 (July, 2016), 288 p., $20.00.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck (UK 2016)

From the Publisher:
'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... roup 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.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck. Transworld Digital, ISBN: 9781473540712 (April, 2016), eBook (ca. 288 p.), £5.99.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
For the crime of executing a jukebox on a lonesome Montana railbed, C. W. Sughrue finds himself sentenced to face the hardest hard cases in the new American West -- and the strangest bird he's ever known...

THE MEXICAN TREE DUCK

With blood on his shoes and the highway, Sughrue takes off on a cross-Western odyssey of sex and gunplay to locate a missing woman who has eluded the FBI, her well-connected Republican husband, and a group of South American cocaine dealers. Joining him are a beautiful undercover deputy, a ragged band of Vietnam buddies, and a young mother and child. Caught in a war he doesn't understand, courting a prize more valuable than he can imagine, Sughrue will find bucketloads of vice and malefaction -- and penitence for more than one man's sins.

Raw, biting, and utterly relentless, this is the award-winning classic tale from a legendary American crime writer.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0446677914 (October, 2001), 247 p., $11.95.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
A writer beyond category who captures and creates parts of America seldom glimpsed in fiction, the storyteller who on the basis of only four novels has been lauded as one of the country's premier authors, James Crumley now reunites his readers with C.W Sughrue - the hard-core private investigator from The Last Good Kiss. In The Mexican Tree Duck Sughrue tries to locate a beautiful, kidnapped woman -- and is lured into a violent, lucrative odyssey across the West.

It seems that no one can find Sarita Cisneros Pines -- not her well-connected Republican husband, not the FBI, not even a group of violence prone guys with vaguely South American accents. And when Sughrue starts searching, working his way from Montana to Aspen, to the Mexican border, he comes up empty too. Empty but for a woman and infant who become Sughrue's responsibility and obsession... the smali, strange, hollowed-out sculpture of a duck that means more than he can imagine -- and the blood that keeps getting spilled on his shoes.

Sughrue, along with a ragged band of Vietnam buddies, a tough-talking female undercover deputy, and an assorted cast of wanderers, lawbreakers, and lost souls, is in the middle of a war he can't understand. And unlike his last war, C.W. will fight this one to the end, trying to separate traitors from friends and the enemy from the innocent.

Full of manic energy, fast sex, sizzling action, exploding violence, and unforgettable characters, The Mexican Tree Duck crackles like tires on a hot Texas highway. It is, in short, James Crumley at his best.

James Crumley: The Mexican Tree Duck. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0892963913 (October, 1993), 247 p., $19.95.