"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."
Widely regarded as the finest first line in all of crime fiction, even more amazingly, the rest of the book easily lives up to the promise. This is my first read from this author, although I believe this was his third novel, published in 1978. I'll have to check out some of the others as well!
