REVIEW

The Scotsman
Dominique Fourniol
19th August, 2000

Sallis sets his tale, conventionally enough for the private investigator genre, in a hip yet dangerous New Orleans. His alcoholic hero, Lew Griffin, a melancholic black detective, enjoys the blues, café au lait and the dames, as he traverses the city's sleazy underbellly on his seemingly permanent quest for lost souls on the run.

All pretty standard, you might think. But Sallis actually delivers thanks to his rare ability to startle the reader virtuallly every step of the way with the range of emotion and penetrative gaze of Griffin, as he observes the shabby life around him.

Sallis's mastery of mood as he steadily casts his spell is such that you barely even notice until you put the book down that Griffin isn't much of a detective, and there isn't much of a plot either. It is a journey on which you must prepare to be both moved and toyed with as Sallis varies his lines of attack.

He has an uncanny knack of shifting the thrust of his tales, often just at the point when the focus is threatening to move towards the how at the expense of the why. But Sallis is never a bore. This is audacioius writing of the highest order, and it is refreshing to find an author prepared to take risks with standard formulas, and good enough to pull it off.

These are stories the world should know about.

NEWS

Jim Sallis In the UK- August 2000 Jim Sallis made his presence felt in the UK during August appearing at the Edinburgh Literary Festival, talking enthusiastically about jazz to Charlie Gillett on London radio and appearing in conversation with Iain Sinclair at that great London literary venue Filthy McNasty's Whiskey Bar in Clerkenwell. If you'd like to see what music he chose for Charlie Gillett, check out the playlist for the show.

It has been a particularly busy period for Jim Sallis as his collected short fiction Time's Hammers has been published by Toxic Press, and Canongate have published his definitive biography of Chester Himes. Ian Rankin describes the work as 'no mere history of a personality... Sallis brings exceptional depth and empathy to his portrait of Himes'. Canongate have also posted an exclusive short story and it seems that Jim Sallis' extraordinary ability may be coming to the attention of a whole new generation of readers.