James Sallis is een Amerikaanse misdaadschrijver, dichter en muzikant wiens werk ingaat op de duistere aspecten van de menselijke natuur en moraliteit. Zijn kenmerkende stijl wordt gekenmerkt door beknopte proza, een krachtige sfeer en een diepgaande impact die wordt bereikt door beknopte verhalen. Sallis onderzoekt vaak de complexiteit van gebrekkige personages en hun reizen door schaduwrijke landschappen, waarbij hij gaandeweg diepgaande waarheden onthult. Het ritme en de sfeer van zijn schrijven worden vaak beïnvloed door zijn diepe connectie met jazz- en bluesmuziek.
Focused on the mystery and crime fiction genres, the POINT BLANK READER series curates volumes featuring acclaimed novelists. Each edition includes a full-length novel alongside selected shorter works and additional writings by the author, providing a comprehensive glimpse into their literary contributions.
Focusing on themes of aging, relationships, loss, and love, this collection of poetry by James Sallis offers a slightly surrealistic and meditative perspective. The work evokes an elegiac tone, inviting readers to reflect deeply on the complexities of human experience.
The mystery of private investigator Lew Griffin is revealed in the conclusion of this critically acclaimed, groundbreaking series. In his old house in uptown New Orleans, Lew Griffin stands alone in a dark room, looking out. Behind him on the bed is a body. Instead of speaking, he reflects on his life—his failing relationship, his missing son, the fact that he hasn’t written in years—and how the two of them ended up there. In a novel as much about identity as about crime, the answers to Lew’s personal mysteries begin to become clear in the series’ brilliantly constructed climax.
Finding people is what former private investigator Lew Griffin excels at. The terrible irony is that the exception is his own missing son. Dreams, memories, and reality run together to form his own darkest night. Lew Griffin is a survivor, a black man in New Orleans—a teacher, a writer, and an ex-detective. Having spent years finding others, he has lost his son—and himself in the process. Now a derelict has appeared in a New Orleans hospital claiming to be Lewis Griffin and toting a copy of one of Lew’s novels. Learning the truth is a quest that will take Griffin into his own past as he tries to deal with the present: a search for three missing young men.
"As Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he has just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes to, he discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the shooter? Somewhere in the Crescent City-and in the white supremacist movement crawling through it-there's an answer. But to get to it, he is going to have to work with the only people offering help, people he knows he should avoid"-- Provided by publisher
Lew Griffin, now fifty years old, has abandoned his former career as a New Orleans private investigator for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back. One of the very few lights from Lew Griffin’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His one-time lover, LaVerne Adams, is dead—and her daughter, Alouette, has vanished into a seamy, dead-end world of users and abusers, leaving behind a critically fragile premature infant daughter. Griffin is determined to keep his distance from the dangers of the New Orleans night. But his inescapable obligation to an old friend keeps bringing him back like a moth to a flame.
A hired assassin searching for a rival killer, a burned-out detective with a terminally ill wife and an abandoned youth surviving by his wits follow inextricably linked paths toward community acceptance in the unforgiving sunlight and sprawl of Phoenix. 20,000 first printing.
Originally published by Gryphon Books in 1993, Difficult Lives was one of the earliest attempts to track the legacy of original paperback writers such as Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Chester Himes. The individual essays on these three first appeared in literary magazines. Difficult Lives visits a rare moment when...
A year or so has passed since the events of Cypress Grove. Ex-policeman, ex- con, former therapist, Turner has become Deputy Sheriff in the small town within driving distance of Memphis, Tennessee, to which he had migrated in hopes of escaping his past. His life is mending as he and Val Bjorn grow closer. And then a young man, arrested on a routine traffic stop with more than $200,000 in his trunk, is forcibly sprung from jail after Sheriff Don Lee is brutally assaulted. Throwing caution aside, Turner goes in pursuit to Memphis, unleashing ghosts he thought he had left behind, and endangering all that matters to him now.
With this flashback novel to Lew Griffin’s past, James Sallis takes readers to 1960s New Orleans, a sun-baked city of Black Panthers and other separatists. A sniper has fatally shot five people. When the sixth victim is killed, Lew Griffin is standing beside her. Though they are virtual strangers, it is left to Griffin to avenge her death, or at least to try and make some sense of it. His unlikely allies include a crusading journalist, a longtime supplier of mercenary arms and troops, and a bail bondsman.