A Novelist's Hard-boiled Take On Big Sky Country

Crime novelist James Crumley's detective tales — including The Wrong Case, Bordersnakes and The Right Madness — were filled with sex, drugs, violence and profanity, and inspired comparisons to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, among others.

In a recent appreciation, The New York Times noted that Crumley "carved out a genre that might properly be called gonzo gumshoe, set mostly in the back alleys, seedy bars and wild, forbidding countryside of Montana." Crumley died Sept. 17 in Missoula, Mont. He was 68.

This interview was originally broadcast June 26, 1987.