Books like Bordersnakes

Crumley essentially wrote the same book over and over again. Hard drinking, hard boiled PIs take road trips filled with crazy sex, crazier drug use and craziest drinking known to man. (At one point one of the leads drink 12 beers + 12 shots, I only do half of that and people think I have a tendency to binge!!) The plot is a series of absurd hijinks that barely matters. It is held together with prose that cuts to the chase giving you an impeccable sense of broken places and broken people without taking itself too seriously. His first three crime books (first 2 Milo + first Sughrue book) are brilliant. I consider them classics of the hard boiled genre. There was a decade long gap before he wrote his next crime book and he would never capture the magic again.Bordersnakes is broadly similar to his earlier works, but it is not as good. The prose got relatively weaker and this feels more like a shameless male wish fulfillment fantasy. Both of his series protagonists - Milo and Sughrue team up for the first time. Sughrue is searching for the men who left him for dead, Milo is searching for people who stole his money. Chapter POV is split 70-30 in Milo's favor. However it does not really matter as they are basically the same character and there is almost no difference in their narrative voices.The two separate narratives however will be hard to keep track off and frankly there is not much of a reason to care. Crumley is more about great individual scenes rather than big picture stuff, so I just enjoyed the journey without trying to think a lot about the coincidences and far-fetched stuff that kept it moving. Crumley's plotting is not so much as complex as it is just stacking up whatever he can think of. He doubles down on the kitchen sink approach as he has to keep two stories going. For example one of his characters is left for dead in the desert but he somehow finds buried beer in the middle of nowhere. Intentionally over the top plotting balanced by utterly gritty prose.However for all of Crumley's stylistic excesses and his character's hedonistic excesses; his prose still serves as a reminder, why so many modern authors cite him as an inspiration. There were more good lines in his previous works but he still keeps churning them out here. His version of happy ending Then drink until I died in my sleep, peacefully strangled by my own vomit. A life lesson Old whores retire; crooked old bankers just get a change of venue. And an epiphany He'd given up his foolish dreams of living his life without occasionally shooting somebody. This testosterone fuelled ride will obviously appeal more to men but even then I will only suggest picking it up to dedicated fans of the genre and the author. Rating - 3/5