'A fantastic road trip...wild, wicked, sweet, painful, courageous, outrageous, and obscene' New York Times

Never the most conventional of private detectives, C. W. Sughrue is called in to solve a far from traditional missing persons case. A beautiful woman has vanished, and Sughrue is set to be the next in a long line of people who have tried to find her: the FBI, her well-connected Republican husband, and – most worryingly – a group of South American drug dealers. And his only clue is a hollowed-out sculpture of a duck.

From Montana to the Mexican border, Sughrue embarks on a wild ride, as he finds himself in and out of trouble – and the beds of one or two women. And, as he runs from his memories of Vietnam, he ponders the meaning of loyalty and revenge. This is a journey like no other from the pen of James Crumley, the master of a generation of crime writers.