- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: No Exit Press (15 Nov 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1874061483
- ISBN-13: 978-1874061489
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 713,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Long-Legged Fly
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Product Description
Review
A hard-boiled PI investigates missing persons cases in New Orleans's French Quater over a span of three decades in this uncoventional suspense novel. --"Publishers Weekly
Black detective Lew Griffin skips his father's final illness (New Orleans, 1964) when he's hired to find a missing person--well-known black leader Corene Davis. Successfully finding Davis, he repeats the trick three times--searching for runaway teenager Cordelia Crayson in 1970, his friend Jimmy Smith's kid sister Cherie in 1984, and finally his own long-unseen son David in 1990. The searches are understated, variously successful, and seasoned with increasingly elegiac glimpses of Lew's erratic home life (his unlikely romance with British nurse Vicky, his repeated return to his obliging friend LaVerne); and readers waiting for first-novelist Sallis (the story collection A Few Last Words, 1970) to drop the connections among them will wait in vain. But an unexpectedly poignant sketch of the detective emerges through the apparent holes in the plot. Not so much a detective story as a story about a detective, then- -but one that exploits the conventions of the genre with quietly distinctive power. Likely target audience: people who think James Lee Burke's moody Dave Robicheaux novels are overplotted. --"Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Black detective Lew Griffin skips his father's final illness (New Orleans, 1964) when he's hired to find a missing person--well-known black leader Corene Davis. Successfully finding Davis, he repeats the trick three times--searching for runaway teenager Cordelia Crayson in 1970, his friend Jimmy Smith's kid sister Cherie in 1984, and finally his own long-unseen son David in 1990. The searches are understated, variously successful, and seasoned with increasingly elegiac glimpses of Lew's erratic home life (his unlikely romance with British nurse Vicky, his repeated return to his obliging friend LaVerne); and readers waiting for first-novelist Sallis (the story collection A Few Last Words, 1970) to drop the connections among them will wait in vain. But an unexpectedly poignant sketch of the detective emerges through the apparent holes in the plot. Not so much a detective story as a story about a detective, then- -but one that exploits the conventions of the genre with quietly distinctive power. Likely target audience: people who think James Lee Burke's moody Dave Robicheaux novels are overplotted. --"Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
Set in the more sordid parts of New Orleans, Long Legged Fly and Moth feature a black private investigator who has a bad drink problem, a shady past and a present that continually tries to drag him down into the depths of hell.'
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
as big a seller as many a inferior writer?
The Lew Griffin novels are slightly 'left field', admittedly. Sallis himself states that he is no great fan of plot, but the joy of the series is getting inside the head of the sometimes melancholy, occasionally violent Griffin. Buy, read, enjoy...and tell everyone that Sallis is the bomb.
The Lew Griffin novels are slightly 'left field', admittedly. Sallis himself states that he is no great fan of plot, but the joy of the series is getting inside the head of the sometimes melancholy, occasionally violent Griffin. Buy, read, enjoy...and tell everyone that Sallis is the bomb.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
These are the first two titles featuring Lew Griffin, a black private eye/lecturer/writer in New Orleans.Full of atmosphere,the books put one in mind of James Lee Burke on one of his best days.Gritty and philosophical at the same time,the writing will keep you turning the pages in sheer pleasure.Particularly recommended to readers of Robicheaux,with whom Griffin shares many character traits.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the best of the Lew Griffin series despite its unexpected structure, namely four unrelated events spanning 26 years in the main character's life. It is the best because of the emotional response it achieves while depicting the life of a black man in New Orleans. The reader can not but help feel for the people portrayed, which enables some understanding for their predicaments, because eachis rendered with truth. The dialogue is also very good although the descriptions of the city and the region surrounding it are sketchy to say the least. A bonus is the absence of too many literary references that clutter the later works. Likewise the melancholy of the main character, Lew Griffin, is kept in check in this work - something James Sallis is unable or unwilling to do in subsequent books in the series.
Be prepared to sympathise with Lew Griffin and those he tries to help even if you are unable to empathise, which I suggest you will.
His books are not an emotionally easy read.
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