I starting reading this series because I received a ARC of James Sallis' new book Sarah Jane to review. The marketing of the books from Soho Press claims that James Sallis is going through a renaissance, and I am not sure what the qualifications are for that experience. The problems with his writing are 1) he is a Black author writing detective stories and that has already been done by talented writers like Chester Himes and Walter Moseley so you can't help comparing Sallis to them; and 2) Sallis' claim to fame is his book Drive was made into a film starring Ryan Gosling and Brian Cranston. To me, his books read more like movie scripts, there is plenty of atmosphere (they are set in New Orleans) and action, but the characters are not well developed. I think he should stick to writing movie scripts and not try to pass off a series of 200 page books as a finished product. But then I am not finished reading the series, maybe they get better.

I liked it. Lew Griffin, private detective, is a damaged man. He is an alcoholic who has blackouts and has spent time in hospitals due to his drinking. But he is wise to the hard streets of New Orleans and a good detective. This is the first in the series and consists of three cases. Along the way we learn who Griffin is and some of the why that he is a damaged man, one thing being his son went missing while traveling and never was heard from again. It is definitely a good read.

Began this immediately after completing 'Cypress Grove', first of Sallis' Turner trilogy and the language that I loved in that novel is also here; a poetic prose with a rhythm like the blues music that is Lew Griffin's one constant companion through the 30 years of his life told, in four episodes, in this novel. An easier read than 'Cypress Grove', the book takes Lew Griffin, a New Orleans PI, from the 1960s to the '90s, via four essentially missing persons cases. The cases themselves are not really the point; the character studies, the angry young man to down and out alcoholic to wiser middle-age are. There is a sadness, a fatalistic nature to the narrative, a melancholy that echoes the songs, by Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson and others, referenced at various points. At times reminiscent of Chandler, Burke, and, especially in the '60s and '70s sections, Mosley, James Sallis nonetheless has a voice of his own and I'll be back to listen to the blues very soon....

“In the darkness things always go away from you. Memory holds you down while regret and sorrow kick hell out of you. The only help you'll get is a few hard drinks and morning.”

This memoir of Lew Griffin, private detective, occasional drunk, crime writer and professional citizen of New Orleans, is the debut novel from James Sallis and no amount of superlative praise can do it justice. Sallis has written introductions for books from Derek Raymond, Charles Willeford and James Lee Burke and he wears his influences on his sleeve, but in a good way. Almost as soul searchingly dark as Raymond's famous first Factory book and yet despite the deep deep existential melancholy that settles over proceedings there's a little bit of joy and hope sprinkled here and there, maybe things aren't as bad as they seem?

Told in four sections, jumping from 1964 to 1970 to 1984 and finishing in 1990, Sallis does himself an injustice by drawing parallels between himself and his fictional creation, calling his work "mere entertainment" but at least he allows a critic to clarify that they are "certainly a bit more than mere entertainment" like the greats of the genre who came before and after James Sallis dug deep in to the dark heart of humanity to craft a genre fiction shell to disguise the literary insights contained within.

“I wondered then: what was it that started a person sinking? Was that long fall in him (or her) from the start, in us all perhaps; or something he put there himself, creating it over time and unwittingly just as he created his face, his life, the stories he lived by, the ones that let him go on living.”

The novel extends far past it's natural fictional conclusion as if making a statement against the classic Hollywood detective pictures of the 40s he references, films where a drunken, selfish heel will return from the gin within 90 minutes and become a solid citizen. Sallis is showing us that life is so much dirtier than that, it's not all climbing the social and real estate ladders or designer suits, life is a struggle, it doesn't wrap itself up neatly in three act structures and there's never a happy ending because there's as much chance that it will end in the rain at midnight as it will at midday with cocktails on the veranda as the kids play happily on the lawn.

Gritty and atmospheric. The story was disjointed (or, rather, the three or four stories were disjointed even within themselves). But, as a character study of the detective, it was wonderful. Vivid portrayal of both New Orleans and a brooding detective.

http://dsdmona1.blogspot.com.es/2014/09/el-tejedor.html