Another Kind of Eden by James Lee Burke

 

I kinda figured this was at least in with a chance of bringing the kissing-the-light-socket feeling I like so much, and it brings that aplenty. While this probably isn't exactly a crime novel, there's definitely crime at its core, and probably something darker--especially toward the end as the novel veers explicitly toward the supernatural. It's the early 1960s and all the things that boiled over later in the decade are there just starting to simmer, and there's kinda casual bigotry of all sorts around, as well as drugs and violence (the worst violence seems to erupt from people who can't get the war/s they fought in out of their heads). There is beauty in the mountains of Colorado, but there is also rot. It's a love story that ends when one of the lovers disappears, and the other one kinda runs away. It's brutal and harsh, but it's Burke and it's laden with juicy turns of phrase and hard (in many senses) characters and incident. Beautiful and gripping.