The Last Good Kiss

First edition, first printing. Signed by James Crumley on the title page and front free endpaper and inscribed to the novelist Chuck Kinder, a close friend: "This is for you Chuck + my favorite Mom + all the years it's gonna take for your fucking son to grow up. up your wingy with a wing-wang dingy. 9/2/78." [ix], 259, [2] pp. Bound in publisher's quarter burgundy cloth over salmon paper-covered boards, lettered in salmon gilt. Very Good with slight lean to spine and rubbing to spine gilt, light wear, soiling, and toning to boards, and light foxing to textblock edges. Light soiling to front free endpaper, small faint dampstain to lower textblock edge and lower gutter of endpapers and first and last few pages. In a Very Good unclipped dust jacket with light toning, moderate edgewear, and minor dampstaining along lower edge. A double-signed copy of Crumley's second detective novel, which famously opens with the line: When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. Crumley did quite a lot of day drinking with his friend Chuck Kinder, who hosted numerous members of the California literary scene in the 1970s and stayed in touch after he left to teach at the University of Pittsburgh. Michael Chabon, who was one of Kinder's students, later modeled the character of Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys on his former professor.…