Book of the Month
for April
The Long Legged Fly
by James Sallis
No Exit Press £4.99 (1 874061 48 3)
Covering a period of 26 years The Long Legged Fly relates four episodes in the life of black New Orleans Private Eye Lew Griffin. From a sixties murder to a nineties disappearance Griffin rides the angst ridden decades. Given his characteristic Black American mixture of stoicism and barely hidden fury Griffin survives the trip, just. But occasionally he falls into the bottom of a bottle. Being black and intrusive Griffin has a front row ticket to all the worst shows in town; racism, narcotics, vice. Lives are destroyed for kicks, the Louisiana swamps suck people in and Griffin finds it hard to keep out of the mud. So he drinks. But as, Sallis has Griffin say (quoting Beckett), "I can't go on, so I shall go on." Griffin's task is to endure and hope. And he does, in a fashion.... Through failed (and successful) relationships, beatings and murder.
For all its downbeat tone Sallis's book is lyrical and, in the end, guardedly optimistic. The New Orleans he describes may be humid, oppressive, over-run with cockroaches; it may be a place where the worst thrive, where a sixteen year old girl can be destroyed in a moment for a moments gratification. But it is also a place alive with music, good cooking and clean cold beer; a place where hookers, bent cops, and even perverts have feelings. Victims and exploiters, we are told, are all in the same bag and maybe the seemingly powerless in reality have the most power. With his concern to tackle the big moral questions and his liberal use of literary allusions Sallis is firmly based in the PI tradition and is bound to invite comparison with Mosley and Himes. On this evidence he's easily good enough to live in that company. Recommended reading. (R.L.)