Sometimes, having written a great line, especially a great first line, is unfair to an author’s reputation.

Mention “Call me Ishmael” and everyone knows you’re talking about Herman Melville, but virtually no one can quote another line from any of his books. Ditto Daphne du Maurier’s “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” from “Rebecca.”

The first line of the first book I read by James Crumley, America’s reigning poet laureate of the crime novel, is the beginning of “The Last Good Kiss” (which to my mind is the best title of any book since “The Big Sleep”). Here’s how the line goes: “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 out of a fine spring afternoon.”

Oh, my heavens, I thought. I’d never heard of this author, I knew nothing about the book, but I knew I was in for the ride of my life. And I was right. I don’t know that there has ever been a better private eye novel – and it should be pointed out that I worship Raymond Chandler, and rank P.I. writers Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Dennis Lehane, and Robert B. Parker among the great American writers of the past century.

It is difficult to believe that that line was written 27 years ago, and that there have been only four novels since then. Some short stories, lots of movie work, sure, but only four novels. Mr. Crumley should be thrashed soundly for denying his readers more of his work. Happily, at last, there is a new one,”The Right Madness” (Viking, 289 pages, $24.95), and it’s a honey.

I’ll admit now that it is inappropriate for me to review a novel by Mr. Crumley. The tendency to gush is overwhelming, like trying to describe the new girl with whom you’ve just fallen in love. Reason, subtlety, fairness, temperateness all fly off the cliff. The writing, the style, the poetry of the prose, are so powerful that they forestall all my attempts at criticism. And this book’s plot defies description.

A friend asks C.W. Sughrue (pronounced “Shoog,” as in sugar, and “rue,” as in “rue the goddamned day,” as the private detective once explained it) to recover stolen psychiatric files. He doesn’t want to work for a friend but can’t resist a $20,000 retainer, so he takes the case. Soon virtually everyone in the files and, it seems, everyone they’ve ever known, starts dying in violent ways.

There are as many lost dreams and broken promises as there are corpses in these pages, and if you’re looking for uplifted spirits and happy endings, go read “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” instead. But, oh, the prose! Here’s a sampling:

Of a crushed hope: “She kissed me in that soft and easy way that says good-bye better than a thousand words.”

Part of a philosophy of life: “Anybody who doesn’t believe in revenge never lost anything worth having.”

Sughrue’s view of his job: “Time to be a detective again. Put away my laptop and return to artful lies and fancy footwork.”

An observation: “Nothing like a reformed biker to disapprove of the badly dressed.”

And a way of describing something we’ve all seen but couldn’t articulate in quite the same manner: “Charlie looked unhappy, not just his long hangdog face, but also his infrequent smiles that looked more like grimaces of pain than grins, as if he were sitting on a toilet passing a small animal with sharp claws.”

Sughrue is the ur-hardboiled private eye. He drinks enough to kill the cavalry, does enough drugs to slow down a herd of bison, and has yet to meet a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with him. Maybe “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” is more realistic.

Mr. Crumley does have a tendency to go over the top. In “The Mexican Tree Duck,” his often brilliant 1993 novel, there were a couple of twin, grotesquely fat arms dealers who rode tanks in the back country. In “The Right Madness,” I lost count of the dead bodies, and I had some trouble accepting the matter-of-factness of many of the killings.

Here, in one scene, a couple of tough-looking thugs approach Sughrue and tell him they are the brothers of a young woman. They don’t resemble the girl, so without further ado, the private detective pulls out his pistol and shoots one in the eye and puts the remaining six rounds into the face of the other one.

“The war and the rest of life,” he muses, “had taught me that the first punch usually wins the fight.”

Structurally, “The Right Madness” is a typical private-eye novel, with the hero hired to find someone or something. The adventure then takes him from place to place, interviewing a variety of people as he searches for clues to bring him the sought-after object.

Yet there is little else typical of anything in a James Crumley novel. The characters often seem to be plucked out of a Hunter Thompson drug-induced fantasy, and the coldness with which some of them function could come from Jim Thompson on a bad hair day.

On the flip side, there is a lyric romanticism to Sughrue, who is smart enough to know how bad people can be, but hopes, always, that he’s wrong. He knows he’s not a good citizen, and that’s why his wife is leaving him, but he loves her and hopes – against reason – she won’t.

There aren’t words enough in my vocabulary to force you to go out and buy “The Right Madness,” but you should do yourself a favor and do it and read it tonight. Nothing you could do with your clothes on will be as pleasurable.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.