Last week, Ray Banks gave us a list of his favorite short series (alright, John Fante’s Arturo Bandini books ain’t mysteries, but they are a good example of what I’d asked him for). Two other great examples of what the short series medium can accomplish are from the same author. James Sallis’s Lew Griffin saga – The Long Legged Fly, Moth, Black Hornet, Eye of the Cricket, Bluebottle and Ghost of a Flea and the John Turner trilogy – Cripple Creek, Salt River and Cypress Grove (also available in omnibus form What You Have Left). Each book illuminates the others as well as giving the central characters layers of definition and while the volumes can be read and enjoyed by themselves, the true emotional scope of the series is only magnified by taking in all of them.
What’s that? You don’t know Sallis’s name? Well, that’s about to change. First, his crime novella about a movie stunt driver by day and getaway wheelman by night, Drive has been adapted for film by Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn (who took the best director honors for it at this year’s Cannes Film Festival) and the film starring Ryan Gosling hits a movie screen near you in September, and not to be upstaged by a splashy adaptation, he’s just published one of the most intriguing mysteries of the year, The Killer Is Dying.
The standalone novel may involve an aging contract killer coming to the end of his life and a police investigation into the murder of his last target, but the mystery at the heart of the book is left to the reader to solve. When Christian, the killer for hire’s latest target is murdered by someone else before he can commit it himself, he engages in some serious what’s it all about? introspection and ends up aiding police in their investigation by dropping them odd trails of string to follow. The homicide detective, has his own existential angst to deal with. His terminally-ill wife has committed herself to hospice care and cut herself off from him. When he’s not chasing down Christian’s cryptic clues to the seemingly motive-less killing of an Arizona business man. Meanwhile Jimmie, a teenager living alone in the suburban house abandoned by his parents - surviving by forging their signatures and selling off their possessions in online auctions – has begun experiencing unsettling dreams…
The trinity of narrative points of view, etched in spare, delicate passages, push toward each other, coloring in the scene from the edges of the page, until only the silhouette of their connection is left in the center like a crime-scene chalk outline. Sallis has constructed a subtle and deliberately paced meditation on life, death and the various paths taken toward the same end.
This one won’t underline the plot points in marker for casual reading, but the attention it demands you pay is rewarded with economic story-telling that won’t insult your intelligence. Couple that with the high-octane, Drive and you've got a great introduction to the dynamics of your next favorite crime writer.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
