Waltz Across Texas

by Max Crawford

PBK

Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Jim Nesbitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sprawling 1975 tale of lust, greed, corruption and murder rambles from the semi-mythical West Texas town of Flavannah (there is a real-life Fluvanna, Texas), a fly-speck of a dying farm and ranch hub high on the caprock, to the glass towers of Houston and its endless sprawl and the eclectic center of state government and higher learning known as Austin. The story is told by Sugar Campbell, a Korean War hero and former Army intelligence officer, who is hired by his high school buddy, Son Cunningham, to return to his hometown after a somewhat shady venture in the California oil business goes bust. Campbell can’t tell whether he’s being hired to kill somebody, be a patsy for a killing or be killed. The somebody is Tee Kitchens, heir to a Texas cattle ranch on the verge of bankruptcy and holder of a six million life insurance policy that is both the key to the ranch’s survival and the reason Kitchens is marked for death. But not the only reason as Cunningham, an ambitious political and business climber, is the lover of Kitchens’ wife, the beautiful and ethereal Adrienne. Crawford, the late Texan who also wrote one of Ronald Regan’s favorite novels, Lords of The Plain, knowingly describes the arid West Texas landscape and its geological features, the hushed corridors of money, power and corruption in Houston and Austin and the manic actions of the feuding ranch factions that have different reasons for wanting Kitchens dead. Best of all, Crawford captures the epic scope of Texas itself, which taught me to raise the horizons of my own novels and set my own characters in constant motion across this great state. Warning: This book is long out of print so you’ll have to hunt for weathered copy, but the search will be well worth the trouble.

[Dan Oko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Max Crawford died this fall. He was born in West Texas. Studied at Stanford with Wallace Stegner, and moved to Montana. He had some mutual friends, and the Montana-Texas connection made me curious. This book is about gumshoe politics, a sort of cross between Brammer's A Gay Place and Crumley's Last Good Kiss. The style is retro, which makes sense since the book was written in the '70s, but it's a apropos Texas novel.

Finished this back in the winter. I liked the book a lot. I have spent time in the area's Crawford discussed, and he paints a great picture, alive with real Texas characters. Though it might not be a book for everybody, I still think that Crawford deserved better recognition.

[Janelle V. Dvorak · Rating 3 out of 5]

tension like razor wire.

[Jordan West · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spiritual sequel to Bud Shrake's Strange Peaches; Dallas by way of Red Harvest, and suffused with that combination of moral ambiguity, ennui, dread and sense of all-pervading corruption/malevolence particular to mid70s neonoir (Altman's Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Cutter and Bone). Strongly suspect the Coens read this at some point - there's a scuzzy redneck insurance investigator unaffectionately referred to as Pork Man who simply *has* to have been an inspiration for M Emmett Walsh's character in Blood Simple.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember this book only because everybody lies to everybody which makes a delightfully complicated mystery.