The Long-Legged Fly

by James Sallis Narrated by G. Valmont Thomas

Overview

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 with the prospect that his own life has come to resemble those of the people he is attempting to find.

Waking in a hospital after an alcoholic binge, Griffin finds another chance in a nurse who comes to love him, but again he reverts to his old life in the mean streets among the predators and their prey. When his son vanishes, Griffin searches back through the tangles and tatters of his life, knowing that he must solve his personal mysteries before he can venture after the whereabouts of others.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Poet and short story writer Sallis creates a lyrical, unconventional suspense novel that reads like variations on a blues riff. In four sections, set in 1964, 1970, 1984 and 1990, black New Orleans detective Lew Griffin moves from his feisty mid-20s to successful middle age as a writer. He carries with him the requisite burdens of the hardboiled PI--memories of his days as an Army MP, a son and an ex-wife, excessive reliance on alcohol and tobacco--and he also quotes, poetry, literature and philosophy. Although some characters appear throughout, each section of the novel is virtually self-sufficient, with Griffin trying to find a series of missing persons. He wins some and loses some: he finds a black female activist trying to pass as white; he fails to save a teenage runaway from drugs and porn films. The richest (and longest) section traces how Griffin escapes loneliness and comes to understand himself through his relationship with the British nurse he meets at a detox center; he realizes he has filled himself with bourbon and the blues for too long. In the end, he recognizes the improvisational nature of his life, ``moving closer and closer to the truth'' in the conclusion to this haunting debut novel. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Praise for The Long-Legged Fly

“A compelling novel. Lew Griffin holds us rapt.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“An extraordinary first novel . . . justly compared to James Lee Burke and Raymond Chandler.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“One of the most enjoyable and most important writers working today, James Sallis has quietly revolutionized an entire genre of literature. If you don't ordinarily read crime fiction, you will love these books. if you do read crime fiction, you will never look at it the same after meeting Lew Griffin.”
—Sara Gran
 
“Through poetically spare phrases and emotionally evocative dialog, James Sallis inspires both boundless beauty and slow-burn, unimaginable terror—at times simultaneously. In The Long-Legged Fly, Sallis skillfully, patiently, brilliantly peels back the skin, muscle, and bone of each character, exposing both their highest promise and most consuming evil. This is an exciting book; far more than a crime fiction. It is an ingenious, visceral expose of the dark poetry that, thread by ebony thread, is woven into the fabric of each of us. This is the extraordinary and expansive talent of James Sallis.”
—Stephen Mack Jones, author of the August Snow series

“Sallis has created in Lew Griffin one of the great literary characters and written what may very well be the last great detective novel.”
—Spinetingler Magazine

“Poet and short story writer Sallis creates a lyrical, unconventional suspense novel that reads like variations on a blues riff . . . A haunting debut novel.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for James Sallis

“One of the most inventive and affecting sagas in recent crime fiction. Lew Griffin is an African-American private detective in New Orleans (and a poet and teacher) who specializes in finding missing persons. Griffin’s moral intelligence and questioning mind fold a noir perspective into post-existential angst. And of course there’s New Orleans, full of dangerous mirage.” 
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal 

“Beautifully captures the struggle between despair and hope within Griffin’s soul, and the piquant savor of a curiosity that—like New Orleans itself—refuses to die.”
—The Seattle Times

“Sallis is a sure hand—characters and prose, of course, dialogue, too, but he is also a subtle weaver of plot, with the perfect level of push. His descriptions evoke a place that seems to fully exist just around the corner, and his people speak and sweat and live and die and it's all a great pleasure.” 
—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone 
 
“James Sallis—he’s right up there, one of the best of the best . . . Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy.”
—Ian Rankin, for The Guardian

“Unlike those pretenders who play in dark alleys and think they’re tough, James Sallis writes from an authentic noir sensibility, a state of mind that hovers between amoral indifference and profound existential despair.”
—The New York Times
 
“Sallis writes crime novels that read like literature.”
—Los Angeles Times
 
“Classic American crime of the highest order.”
–Time Out
 
“[A] master of America noir . . . Sallis creates vivid images in very few words and his taut, pared down prose is distinctive and powerful.”
—Sunday Telegraph

“James Sallis is without doubt the most underrated novelist currently working in America.”
—Catholic Herald

AUGUST 2010 - AudioFile

Originally published in 2000, this mystery introduces Sallis's private investigator, Lew Griffin. The book feels more like a short story collection than a novel as the focus is not a single mystery but many, and the various cases take place over three decades. Instead, the common thread is Griffin himself. Although he frequently finds missing persons, Griffin also struggles to find himself. Narrator G. Valmont Thomas expertly captures Griffin’s hard-boiled intensity. In addition, he draws the listener into the sultry and somber atmosphere of the French Quarter of New Orleans. The combination of Thomas's voice and Sallis’s words brings the listener into a dark world. R.F. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169747218
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/06/2008
Series:	Lew Griffin Mysteries , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

"Hello, Harry."

    His sick eyes slid in the light. He was wearing a corduroy coat over a denim shirt, chinos bagged out at knee and butt, pant legs too long, cuffs frayed. They'd all seen better days, clothes and man alike. Harry had always been a sharp dresser, people said; they even used the word natty. But now skag and his own errant heart had got him.

    "Carl?" His voice was an emphysematous whisper. Even now a cigarette dangled out the side of his mouth. It waggled up and down as he talked. "I got the money, man. Business as usual, right? Just like you said." A rumbling cough deep in his chest.

    "No rush, Harry. Be cool, there's plenty of time. Let up a little, enjoy life." The yard lights were behind me and he squinted at the shadow moving toward him. Not that it would have made much difference. He didn't know me from Earl Long. "And anyhow, first I want to tell you a story. You like stories, Harry?"

    Behind us, oil derricks heaved and rested, heaved and rested.

    "Magazine Street. Ten—fifteen, Saturday night, about a month ago. There was a girl from Mississippi, Harry. And a party. And you. Any of this beginning to sound familiar?"

    His eyes searched the darkness around him.

    "I've been looking for you a long time, Harry. It took a long time to find you. A man like you, with your needs, he shouldn't be so hard to find."

    He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threwit down. It lay there like a half-blind eye. I stepped out of the light and when he saw me he was scared for the first time, really scared. Old fears die hard.

    "It's only a story, of course. Stories help us go on living. Stories can't hurt anyone, can they, Harry?"

    I let him see the knife in my hand then, a leatherworker's knife.

    "Big Black Sambo's coming to get you, Harry. Nigger's gonna carve you up like you did her. Nothing left for the pigs and chickens, not even enough for soul food."

    His eyes moved. He knew escape was somewhere. But he also knew that like everything else in his life it was going to get away from him.

    "Look, man, I don't know who you are, but you got it all wrong. You listen to me, it wasn't my fault. I just fix things—arrange them, like—that's all I ever done. It was those crazies, man. Goddamn long hair and kraut van. They're the ones did that girl."

    It tumbled out of him much as the world must have gone in: fitful starts, none of them connected; and underneath, everything blurring together.

    I raised the knife and light glinted on the curved blade.

    "Yeah, I know, Harry. Crazies on skag and smack feeding new monkeys, crazies on speed and booze and horse and the rush of a couple hundred dollars they just boosted out of some mom and pop's till. But who got the stuff for them, Harry? Who gave it to them and started the party? How much of their stake did it cost them? And whose idea to bring the girl into that?"

     Fear lit his eyes like a torch. All around us oil derricks sighed, the last breaths of tired old men.

    He turned to run but fear tangled his legs. He fell. I let him crawl, a few yards. He was sobbing. Choking.

    "You didn't even know her name, Harry." I walked up slowly behind him, got a foot under and flipped him over. He flopped like something not human, and his eyes rolled. I let him have a good long look at my face, all the things that were in it.

    "Sleepy after your bedtime story?"

    Blood welled out of his throat and soaked denim, corduroy, ground. No light left behind those eyes now. No light anywhere.

    I searched his pockets and got the money—that was for the kid. Then I bent down and opened up his wasted belly with the knife.

    "That was for Angle," I said.

    Behind us, oil derricks shushed any eulogy.

Chapter Two

I hadn't been to the apartment in three days, the office in four, so it was a toss-up. Finally, cruising down St. Charles, I decided the office was closer so what the Hell. I went around the block a few times. All the parking spaces were filled. I finally pulled the Cad into a towaway zone and raised the hood. Weak, but it might work. It had before.

    The bakery was doing hot business, but upstairs it looked like everybody had moved out. There was something peculiar about that at two-fifteen in the afternoon. Then I remembered it was Labor Day. Maybe I'd have to do some work to celebrate.

     I stopped in front of the door marked "Lewis Griffin, In estigations" (the v had escaped a year or so back; most days I envied it) and got out the key. There were a lot of notes tacked to the door—I had an informal arrangement with the bakery for taking messages. I ripped them off, turned the key and went on inside. The floor was littered with mail they'd dropped through the slot. I scooped it up and dropped it on the desk with the messages.

    There was a half-filled glass of bourbon and an almost empty bottle on the desk. A fly floated in what was left in the glass. I thought about it, fished the fly out with a letter-opener, drank, poured in the rest of the bottle. Then I sat down to go through all the junk.

    Most of it was just that. Circulars, subscription renewal notices, religious pamphlets. There were three letters from the bank that I was overdrawn and would I please at my earliest convenience drop by and see Mr. Whitney. There was also a telegram. I held it up, turning it over and over in my hands. Never liked those things.

    I finally ripped it open and looked. There was the usual salad of numbers and letters that meant nothing. Under that was the message.

FATHER GRAVELY ILL STOP ASKING FOR YOU STOP BAPTIST MEMORIAL MEMPHIS STOP PLEASE CALL STOP LOVE MOTHER

    I sat there staring at the yellow paper. Ten minutes must have gone by. The old man and I had never been close, not for a long time anyhow, but now he was asking for me. Or was that just something Mom put in? And what the hell happened, anyhow? I couldn't see anything short of a train or howitzer ever stopping the old horse.

    I got up and went to the window, taking the bourbon with me. I put it down in one gulp and put the glass on the sill. Down in the street a group of kids were playing what looked like cops and robbers. The robbers were winning.

    I went back to the desk and dialed LaVerne's number. I didn't really expect to catch her this time of day, but she got it on the third ring.

    "Lew? Listen, man, I've been trying to get in touch with you all week. Your mother's been calling me two, three times a day. I left messages all over this town."

    "Yeah, I know, honey. Sorry. I've been away on business."

    "But you always let me know ..."

    "Didn't know myself until the last minute." I looked wistfully at the empty bottle on the desk (good word, wistfully), wondering if the drugstore across the street would be open. I hadn't noticed. "But I'm back now and looking to see you."

    "What is it, Lew? What's wrong?"

    "Mom didn't say?"

    "She wouldn't even have told me who she was if she didn't need something."

    "My father's sick. I don't know, a heart attack, a stroke, maybe an accident—something, anyhow. 'Gravely ill' was what she said."

    "Lew. You've gotta go up there. Next plane."

    "And what would I use for money?"

    She paused. "I've got money."

    "Like the man says, Thanks but no thanks."

    Another pause. "Someday that pride of yours'll kill you, Lew. The pride or the anger, I don't know which'll get you first. But look, it can be a loan, okay?"

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Excerpted from THE LONG-LEGGED FLY by James Sallis. Copyright © 1992 by James Sallis. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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