The burned-out Memphis cop named Turner who sought refuge from his demons as a rural sheriff's deputy in James Sallis's "Cypress Grove" is still a long way from being socialized in Cripple Creek. But he's now admitting visitors to his cabin in the woods, and when a mobster blows in from the city to spring a confederate from the local jail, Turner is mad enough to take his grievance straight back to Memphis. "Figure they can do whatever they want out here on the edge, I'm thinking," he says, in the spare but eloquent idiom that pegs him — along with this superior series — as a keeper.

This is the second in James Sallis' series of detective novels featuring Turner, a streetwise cop in the Deep South with an unusual past that includes spells in prison.

He has taken a job as a sheriff's deputy in a quiet backwater, but when a prisoner with a mysterious haul of cash is sprung from jail and two of his colleagues are viciously assaulted, he's drawn back to the big, bad city in the quest for answers and retribution. The brooding atmosphere and depth of characterisation mark this as superior mystery fare, but the prose is so stripped and understated that at times I found it hard to follow the plot.

Sallis is really on a roll. Last October saw the arrival of his dynamite noir novella Drive, and now we have the superb second entry in his new Turner series.

As this tale opens, Turner, ex-cop, ex-con, and ex-psychotherapist, remains on the lam in rural Cypress Grove, Tennessee, escaping the demons of past lives in Memphis, but he is starting to mend. There's a developing relationship with Val Bjorn, teacher and country musician; there's the appearance of his daughter from Seattle; and there's the fact that he has come out of hibernation to accept the job as deputy sheriff of Cypress Grove. Then his boss, the kindly sheriff, is assaulted by a gang of mobbed-up toughs in theact of breaking one of their own out of the small-town jail. Turner pursues the thugs to Memphis, confronting his past and giving vent to his suppressed blood lust. Every action prompts a reaction, however, and soon the thugs return to Cypress Grove looking for some blood of their own.

Sallis tells the violent tale quietly, effectively using jump cuts, flashbacks, and flashforwards to generate both suspense and, simultaneously, a sense of inevitability. The stunning finale makes clear that Turner has a lot more healing to do. Sallis' Lew Griffin series remains a cult favorite among devoted hard-boiled fans, but don't be surprised if the Turner novels eventually claim pride of place in the author's oeuvre.

Dodging trouble, ex-cop, ex-con J. Turner has run to one of those small towns that time forgot (CYPRESS GROVE, 2003), but trouble finds him, since, as Turner himself likes to say, no one is exempt. When Sheriff Don Lee and Deputy Turner check out the trunk of a spaced-out speeder, they find a stolen $200,000. Soon enough, the rightful owners 'hard cases from Memphis with little interest in finesse' come after it. Gunned down, Sheriff Lee hovers near death and Turner, whose unwritten code is set in stone, sees no choice but retaliation. In Memphis he calls in favors, generates the requisite intelligence, takes out a couple of bad guys, and heads home, confident that the deadly game of vendetta he started will continue till most of the participants have checked out. He™s right, but he™s not entirely prepared for retaliation from his antagonists, people schooled in an old and bloody tradition. They understand that lasting hurt is best derived from collateral damage, and that Turner, formidable though he is, has more vulnerable loved ones.As usual with Sallis, you don't get a lot of plot. What you get instead are characters to engage the mind and heart and some of the most flavorful writing crime fiction has to offer.

This sequel to Cypress Grove updates Turner's life as a deputy sheriff in a rural county south of Memphis and takes another introspective look into the past of this Vietnam veteran, former cop, ex-con, and retired psychiatrist. When a speeding citation escalates into an arrest, a jailbreak, and an attack on the sheriff's staff, Turner follows the fugitive to Memphis, where he offends more than one syndicate boss in his quest for information. Deciding against continuing the pursuit, Turner returns to his job and waits for the fugitive to come to him. Daily life - an extended visit from his long-estranged daughter, the death of a young hippie living in the woods near his home, the end of a friendship that might have become something more - continues as Turner bides his time, reminiscing about the past and dealing with the reality of today. The climax is, in fact, an anticlimax, for Turner's story and not the pursuit of a fugitive is the crux of this novel. Poet and master storyteller Sallis has a wonderful command of the English language, which makes his every book an experience to savor. Highly recommended.

In Sallis's beautifully written second book to feature Turner, an ex-cop and ex-con (after 2004's Cypress Grove), Turner is working as a deputy sheriff in Cripple Creek, Tenn., a small town where crime is minor and strictly local. Then, late one night, Sheriff Don Lee arrests drunk driver Judd Kurtz with $200,000 in a nylon gym bag hidden in the trunk of his car. Kurtz breaks out of the town jail, seriously wounding two officers in the process. Turner's investigation leads him to an organized crime connection in nearby Memphis that enmeshes him in a web of escalating violence.

Sallis's working method is to simply let the cameras roll, depicting the lives of Turner, his banjo-picking girlfriend, his eccentric co-workers and Cripple Creek itself, as everyone goes about their business. Small moments are recorded as faithfully as large, and stories from earlier days mix with the ongoing crimes and misdemeanors of the present. A structural sleight of hand toward the end may at first confuse but is pretty amazing once the reader catches on.