Showing results by author "James Sallis" in All Categories

In steamy New Orleans, black private detective Lew Griffin has taken on a seemingly hopeless missing-person 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 by the realization that his own life has come to resemble those of the people he is attempting to find.

A stylish piece of noir fiction; now a major film starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. Drive is about a man who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. Sallis combines murder, treachery, and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near-existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

Lew Griffin has quit the detective business and withdrawn to the safety of his old home in New Orleans' Garden District, where he copes with his past by transforming it into fiction. But following the death of a close friend, he returns to the streets - not only the urban ones he has conquered, but also those of the rural South that he escaped long ago - to search for the runaway daughter he didn't know his friend had.

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 avenge her death, or at least to try and make some sense of it. His unlikely allies include a crusading black journalist, a longtime supplier of mercenary arms and troops, and bail bondsman Frankie DeNoux.

Seven years have passed since Driver ended his campaign against those who double-crossed him. He has left the old life, become Paul West, and founded a successful business. But walking down the street one day, he and his fiancée are attacked by two men, and his fiancée is killed. Sinking back into anonymity, Driver realises that his past stalks him - and will not stop. He has to turn and face it.

Now Deputy Sheriff in his new town, Turner seems to be finally escaping his past and creating a new life for himself. That is, until a routine traffic stop results in a young man being sprung from jail, a brutal assault on the Sheriff and Turner risking everything in his wild pursuit. A novel as atmospheric and eventful as anything Sallis has written.

Lew Griffin is a survivor, a black man in New Orleans, a detective, a teacher, a writer. 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 displaying a copy of one of Lew's novels. It is the beginning of a quest that will take Griffin into his own past while he tries to deal in the present with a search for three missing young men.

In his old house in uptown New Orleans, Griffin is alone. His relationship with Deborah is falling apart; his son, David, had disappeared again. And Lew is directionless: he hasn't written anything in years, he no longer teaches. Now he stands in a dark room, staring out the window. Behind him, on the bed, is a body. He thinks if he doesn't speak, doesn't think about what happened, somehow things will be all right.

The small town where Turner has moved is the perfect hide-away for him to forget he was a cop, a psychotherapist and always an ex-con - until a body is found and Turner is thrust into the investigation and everything he thought he had left behind. Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.

Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she's filling. 

David was one of an elite corps of spies trained during the Cold War. But those days are gone and for nine years he has been an ordinary citizen... until a phone call in the middle of the night. The only other known survivor of that elite corps has gone rogue. They need David to stop him. What ensues is an existential cat-and-mouse game played out across the American landscape.

A hired killer on his final job, a burned out detective whose wife is dying slowly, a young boy abandoned by his parents and living alone by his wits. The detective is looking for the killer, Christian, though he doesn't know that. And the boy, Jimmie, is having the killer's dreams. While they never meet, they are inextricably linked; as their stories unfold, all find the solace of community.

As Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he's just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes fully to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. What happened? Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper? There are too many pieces missing, too few facts, and a powerful need to know why a year has been stolen from his life.

Two years have passed since Turner's lover, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes ploughing down Main Street in what appears to be a stolen car. And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown. Haunted by his own ghosts, Turner nonetheless goes in search of a truth he's not sure he can live with.

Die Schatten der Vergangenheit sind lang. Besonders, wenn die Mafia ihre Finger im Spiel hat und noch eine Rechnung offen ist. James Sallis hat die Fortsetzung seines preisgekrönten und erfolgreich verfilmten Romans "Driver" geschrieben - und wieder einen außergewöhnlichen Noir geschaffen. In Hollywoodfilmen schnellt ein Typ, der fast ertrunken wäre, für gewöhnlich aus dem Wasser hoch ins Sonnenlicht und schnappt dabei gierig nach Luft.

Driver ist kein Verbrecher. Jedenfalls nicht im engeren Sinne. Er ist nur der beste Stuntfahrer, den man in Hollywood kriegen kann. Und manchmal fährt er bei Raubüberfällen den Fluchtwagen, obwohl ihn das gar nicht so richtig interessiert. Genauso wenig wie die Hollywoodfilme. Eigentlich will er nur fahren. Aber dann läuft einer dieser Überfälle schief, und Driver findet sich in einem schäbigen Motel in Arizona wieder, mit mehreren Leichen im Zimmer und einer Tasche voller Geldscheine.

New Orleans: Lew Griffin hat seine Vergangenheit als Privatdetektiv hinter sich gelassen. Er ist jetzt Schriftsteller und verbringt seine Tage in einem alten Haus im respektablen Garden District - immer darum bemüht, den heiklen Verführungen der Straße zu entfliehen. Doch als seine ehemalige Freundin LaVerne stirbt und ihre Tochter Alouette verschwindet, sieht er sich gezwungen, der Sache auf den Grund zu gehen. Lew Griffin taucht hinab in die schwülen Nächte der pulsierenden Stadt.

Lew Griffin ermittelt in einem Vermisstenfall. Wie so oft mit wenig Aussicht auf Erfolg. Die Spuren führen ihn ins Schattenreich des French Quarter in New Orleans mit seinen Bars, Touristenattraktionen und dem Rotlichtmilieu. Doch seine Nachforschungen nehmen bald ein gewalttätiges Ende, und er muss einsehen, dass sein eigenes Dasein immer mehr dem der verlorenen Seelen gleicht, auf deren Spur er ist. Lew Griffin ist selbst ein Verlorener.

Ain’t Long Fore Day are poems that carry on in the spirit of the blues. With music and enigma, James Sallis delivers lyrical and narrative poems steeped in the beauty of the every day.