From the writer of the abysmal 'Drive', this book is much of the same: pseudo-philosophy, no action, boring characterisation. It really stunned me because after I finished 'Drive', I was convinced this writer was clueless. The movie adaptation had very little to do with the book, not surprisingly...
That's what we're here for, Griffin. To bear witness, to take notice. Ever doubt that, you just look into a child's eyes. When jumping into a book by James Sallis, especially the ones in the Lew Griffin series, I've learned not to expect that he'll be interested in focusing very much on plot. I ...
James Sallis's books are usually pretty short so you'd think I would be blazing through them. But they're so densely written and realized that it forces you to take your time while reading. This one is probably the densest of the existential Lew Griffin detective series so far. In this, the 4th b...
The mystery of Lew Griffin is revealed in the concluding novel of an honored series. In his old house in uptown New Orleans, Lew Griffin is alone...or almost. His relationship with Deborah is falling apart, his son, David, has disappeared again, leaving a note that sounds final. His friend Don Wa...
My first James Sallis book, and it qualifies as a 'discovery' of a major talent that goes beyond genre borders to write a detective story that is an existentialist meditation on race and relationships, a prose poem dedicated to the city of New Orleans and its exhilarating mix of beauty and darkne...
He Died with His Eyes Open: Derek Raymond's Novel of Who Speaks for the Dead who Don't MatterFrom the Reviewer First Edition, Abacus Press, 1984Derek Raymond was the pen name of English writer Robin Cook, 1931-1994. When he began writing the Factory novels in 1984, he took the pen name to avoi...
The poignant and surprising new thriller by one of America's most acclaimed writers. Few American writers create more memorable landscapes—both natural and interior—than James Sallis. His highly praised Lew Griffin novels evoked classic New Orleans and the convoluted inner space of his black pri...
Chester Himes, A Life, is an autobiography of the late African-American author. The book was written by James Sallis. According to Sallis, two of Himes’ books, which are considered stories, are autobiographies. They are The Third Generation, written in 1954 and The End of a Primitive, written in1...
Rating: 4* of five The Book Description: “Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt. But for now...
A sniper appears in 1960s New Orleans, a sun-baked city of Black Panthers and other separatists. Five people have been fatally shot. When the sixth victim is killed, Lew Griffin is standing beside her. He's black and she's white, and though they are virtual strangers, it is left to Griffin to ave...
Oy, James Sallis. What happened?I read the first book in Sallis' Turner series, Cypress Grove, and found it, by and large, to be a perfectly fine start to what I think of as "testosterone cozies": you know, those male mystery series where a paragon of male competence incisively cooks, screws, que...
Lew Griffin has quit the detective business and withdrawn to the safety of his old home in New Orleans' Garden District, where he copes with his past by transforming it into fiction. Following the death of a close friend, he returns to the streets-- not only the urban ones he has conquered but al...
After having read Drive and its underwhelming sequel Driven, I had come to think of James Sallis as a writer of sparse and short crime fiction who succeeded most in moments of violence or action. Death Will Have Your Eyes proves that impression incorrect. Whilst Sallis, in this earlier novel, sti...
The police car had pulled away minutes earlier. The diner was filling with people on their way to work. Driver reached under the dash, twisted together the wires he’d pulled down before. The engine came to life. “Another minute, I drive away. You get in, I stay.” The man came around to the passen...
The idea being, what we talked about in class before, that most of us are forever looking off into the distance, don’t see the world around us. Nathan turned in twenty-three pages. With a note apologizing and saying he knew how busy I was and I didn’t have to read all of it.” “This is the ant-far...
Someone gave voice to one of them, others within hearing would nod, that was an entire conversation. A particular favorite was: You don’t use your time, it’ll sure use you. From every indication Carl Hazelwood had been well used by time, long before he wound up pinned like...
He had been dreaming. Squeezing his strange body through narrow spaces, standing outside a half-open door, looking down the line of people ahead of him marching toward—something. Then he was in a jungle, with what looked to be hundreds of monkeys all chattering at him angrily from the trees, the ...
You could sit out on the porch listening to limbs crack and fall, shingles on roofs curl in the heat. Fires had started up in the woods just east and started moving in. Oaks, elms, pines, they all went up like flares. Thought sure we were gonna have to evacuate the town. “There was this kid over ...
Three weeks later the real show, no mere test pattern this time, tore open the sky above Hiroshima. Time now (in this country with its particular genius for building on the ruins of others, generations of black slaves, the whole of an indigenous population, exploited immigrants, proud fallen Euro...