Synopses & Reviews
Take a little James Lee Burke, a touch of Ross Macdonald, and a dash of Raymond Chandler, the conventions of the classic American detective story and the fine, thoughtful writing of an original new talent - and you still don't quite have The Long-Legged Fly. This is a smart, tough novel teeming with life and always on the verge of igniting from its own energy. In steamy modern-day New Orleans, black private detective Lew Griffin has once again taken on a seemingly hopeless missing persons case. The trail takes him through the underbelly of the French Quarter with its bar girls, pimps, and tourist attractions. As his search leads to one violent dead end, and then another, Griffin is confronted with the prospect that his own life has come to resemble those he is attempting to find; he is becoming as lost as the frail identities he tries to recover. Waking in a hospital after an alcoholic binge, Griffin finds another chance in a nurse who comes to love him, but again he reverts to his old life in the mean streets among the predators and their prey. When his son vanishes, Griffin searches back through the tangles and tatters of his life, knowing that he must solve his personal mysteries before he can venture after the whereabouts of others. The Long-Legged Fly is exciting, visceral entertainment that takes the reader into a corner of society where life is fought for as much as it is lived. James Sallis has written a compelling novel that succeeds both as detective fiction and worthy literature.
Review
A hard-boiled PI investigates missing persons cases in New Orleans's French Quater over a span of three decades in this uncoventional suspense novel.
Publishers WeeklyBlack detective Lew Griffin skips his father's final illness (New Orleans, 1964) when he's hired to find a missing person--well-known black leader Corene Davis. Successfully finding Davis, he repeats the trick three times--searching for runaway teenager Cordelia Crayson in 1970, his friend Jimmy Smith's kid sister Cherie in 1984, and finally his own long-unseen son David in 1990. The searches are understated, variously successful, and seasoned with increasingly elegiac glimpses of Lew's erratic home life (his unlikely romance with British nurse Vicky, his repeated return to his obliging friend LaVerne); and readers waiting for first-novelist Sallis (the story collection A Few Last Words, 1970) to drop the connections among them will wait in vain. But an unexpectedly poignant sketch of the detective emerges through the apparent holes in the plot. Not so much a detective story as a story about a detective, then- -but one that exploits the conventions of the genre with quietly distinctive power. Likely target audience: people who think James Lee Burke's moody Dave Robicheaux novels are overplotted. Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
A full-time writer, James Sallis lives with his wife in Phoenix, Arizona.