THE MEXICAN TREE DUCK

Crumley's first novel in ten years is a blast from the past—and not the Eighties, either. Though there's a case and a client buried here somewhere—biker lord Norman Hazelbrook hires freewheeling Montana p.i. C.W. Sughrue (Dancing Bear, etc.) to track down his vanished mom, Sarita Cisneros Pines, wife of the Republican special envoy to Mexico—both C.W.'s investigative tactics (``Questions and answers don't mean shit to me,'' he says, preferring mind-altering chemicals and sincere, rapid sex with an informative bartender, Sarita's maid, and an undercover New Mexico sheriff) and the nature of the mystery (rival Mexican gangs swiping witnesses back and forth; links to everybody who ever served with C.W. in Vietnam; dirty drug deals and salted oil wells involving the DEA, the FBI, and lesser government agencies; a zillion double-crosses) give this manic, laid- back picaresque an unmistakably Sixties feel—like an MLA panel on Ken Kesey. Scruffy C.W. is obviously meant to be irresistible this time, and maybe he is, if he's what you've been waiting for. (First printing of 50,000)