James Sallis – författare

'Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room....'Thus begins Drive, a new novella by James Sallis. Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., the story is, according to Sallis, '...about a guy who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night.' In classic noir fashion, he is double-crossed and, though before he has never participated in the violence ("I drive. That's all."), he goes after the ones who doublecrossed and tried to kill him.

The Guitar in Jazz presents in rich, entertaining detail the history and development of the guitar as a jazz instrument. In a series of essays by some of jazz's leading historians and critics, the volume traces the impressive evolution of jazz guitar playing, from the pioneering styles of Nick Lucas and Eddie Lang through the recent innovations of such contemporary masters as Jim Hall and Ralph Towner. Editor James Sallis has included essays that focus on individual guitarists, including Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and JoePass. Other chapters vividly describe important jazz guitar styles, such as swing guitar and fingerstyle guitar. In all, The Guitar in Jazz provides a full and captivating portrait of the guitar's place in jazz. The book also offers insights into the larger history of jazz—its development, the social contexts in which the music came into being, and its eventual recognition as "the American classical music." The essays will appeal to guitar players and enthusiasts, and to all jazz lovers.

"The guitar and American music are inexorably intertwined," writes James Sallis in The Guitar Players. He notes that "American music was built on the backs of black slaves." The great classical blues period of the 1920s had rich antecedents going back further than plantation orchestras featuring fiddles and bajos. The introduction of the guitar, at first not a solo instrument, really demonstrated rhythmic ingenuity. Sallis shows how folk music and a cross-fertilization of traditions and techniques resulted in blues, ragtime, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and country-western. He writes eloquently about fourteen transitional or pivotal performers: the Mississippi Sheiks; Lonnie Johnson, the first virtuoso blues guitarist; Eddie Lang, the first great jazz guitarist; Roy Smeck, the foremost popularizer of guitar playing; Charlie Christian, the founder of modern jazz guitar; Riley Puckett, the first great country-music guitarist; T-Bone Walker, "daddy of the blues"; George Barnes; Hank Garland; Wes Montgomery, the jazz innovator; Mike Bloomfield, the heavy-rock guitarist; Ry Cooder; Ralph Towner; and Lenny Breau.

Winner of the 2019 H.R.F. Keating Award for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fictionOriginally published by Gryphon Books in 1993, Difficult Lives was one of the earliest attempts to track the legacy of original paperback writers such as Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Chester Himes. The individual essays on these three first appeared in literary magazines.Difficult Lives visits a rare moment when daylight was showing around the seams of American society and visions quite in contrast to the sanctioned version drifted to the surface in books one bought off racks in drugstores and bus stations -- stark, bonelike, disturbing books.We're pleased to make Difficult Lives available again, doubling your pleasure by pairing it with Hitching Rides, an equal volume of new essays on other crime writers including Derek Raymond, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson.

A spare, sparkling tour de force about one woman's journey to becoming a cop, by master of noir James Sallis, author of Drive.A spare, sparkling tour de force about one woman's journey to becoming a cop.Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of her predecessor - and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.In the tradition of James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss and Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley, this kaleidoscopic character study sparkles in every dark and bright detail - a virtuoso work by a master of both the noir and the tender aspects of human nature.

A spare, sparkling tour de force about one woman's journey to becoming a cop, by master of noir James Sallis, author of Drive.A spare, sparkling tour de force about one woman's journey to becoming a cop.Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of her predecessor - and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.In the tradition of James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss and Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley, this kaleidoscopic character study sparkles in every dark and bright detail - a virtuoso work by a master of both the noir and the tender aspects of human nature.

“[A] smart, conscientious, often stylish biography” of the great African American crime writer of the mid-twentieth century (The New York Times).   Best known for The Harlem Cycle, the series of crime stories featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, Chester Himes was a novelist and memoirist whose work was neglected and underappreciated in his native America during the 1950s and ’60s, even as he was awarded France’s most prestigious crime fiction prize. In this major biography, literary critic and fellow writer James Sallis examines the life of this “fascinating figure,” combining interviews of those who knew Himes best—including his second wife—with insightful and poignant writing (Publishers Weekly).   “Himes wrote some of the 20th century’s most memorable crime fiction and has been compared to Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. His life was just as spectacular as his novels. Sentenced to 25 years in prison for armed robbery when he was 19, he turned to writing while behind bars and, when released after serving eight years, published two novels. Their poor reception by the white establishment only confirmed Himes’s beliefs about racism in America. He eventually moved to Paris, spending most of the rest of his life abroad. While in Paris, he began to produce the crime fiction that would make him famous, including A Rage in Harlem and Cotton Comes to Harlem . . . [a] riveting biography.” —Library Journal (starred review)   “Satisfying, thoughtful, long-overdue.” —Publishers Weekly   “As intelligent, and as much fun to read, as a book by Himes himself. There is no higher praise.” —The Times (London)

James Sallis’ collection of five novellas.'James Sallis is a superb writer ' - TimesJames Sallis’ World’s Edge presents five masterful novellas—Dayenu, Carriers, Settlers, Allotments, and Reconstruction—exploring fractured societies, human resilience, and the fragile intersections of morality and survival. Sallis’s prose, as sharp as it is evocative, captures the nuances of his dystopian and near-future settings, resonating with themes of dislocation and identity. Widely regarded as a pivotal voice in contemporary US fiction, Sallis’s work aligns with literary giants such as Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, weaving the poetic bleakness of the former with the incisive character studies of the latter. These stories draw readers into a world both intimate and unyielding, where existential questions lurk beneath stark, elegant narratives.

'I drive. That's what I do. All I do.' 'Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room....'Thus begins Drive, a new novella by James Sallis. Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., the story is, according to Sallis, "...about a guy who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. In classic noir fashion, he is double-crossed and, though before he has never participated in the violence ('I drive. That's all.'), he goes after the ones who doublecrossed and tried to kill him."

Part One of the Lew Griffin SeriesThere are those who vanish into the steaming New Orleans night - and it is part time Private Investigator, Repo-man and blues afficionado Lew Griffin's job to find them. A prisoner of the bottle, his past and his skin, Griffin knows every hidden corner of Hell...and is on intimate terms with the demons who dwell there. But the disapperence of a militant woman activist is about to set Griffin on a roller-coaster careening towards rock bottom - carrying the brilliant, tormented black P.I. ever closer to a nightmare that threatens to hit him where he lives..and more brutally than he ever imagined possible.

One of the very few lights from Lew Griffin's dark and violent past has flickered out. His one-time lover, La Verne Adams is dead - and her daughter, Alouette, has vanished into a seamy, dead-end world of users and abusers... leaving behind a crack-addicted infant and a mystery.Abandoning his former career for the safe respectability of teaching, Lew Griffin now spends his time in an old house in the garden district - determined to keep his distance from the lowlife temptations of the New Orleans night. But an inescapable obligation to an old friend is drawing the tormented black ex-p.i. to danger like a moth to a flame. And there will be no turning back when his history comes calling and the dying begins again.

The third part of James Sallis' sequence of novels featuring Lew GriffinIn a time of anger, activism, and bitter racial tensions, a sniper has appeared to heat up an already sweltering New Orleans summer - by tearing up innocent people like paper targets. The shooter's sixth fatality is cut down while she is walking at Lew Griffin's side. The victim was white, Griffin is black - a reluctant young p.i. whose poet's heart has already been hardened by amoral injustice and heavy drink. And though he had only just met his unfortunate companion, Griffin knows it's up to him to find her killer - before a madman puts the final match to a volatile urban tinderbox.

No.4 in the Lew Griffin SeriesLew Griffin is a survivor, a black man in New Orleans, a detective, a teacher, a writer. And he is a man subject to all of the frailties to which we are heir. Having spent years finding others, he has lost his son...and himself in the process.Now a derelict has appeared in a New Orleans hospital claiming to be Lewis Griffin and displaying a copy of one of Lew's novels. It is the beginning of a quest that will take Griffin into his own past while he tries to deal in the present with a search for three missing young men.Somewhere in the underbelly of the Crescent City, there are answers and more questions; there are threats and the promise of salvation; and there is a dangerous descent into the alcoholic haze that marked Griffin's younger days as well as the possibility of rising from it, redeemed. Lew Griffin's investigation is the hero's journey, mythic and strengthening and thoroughly satisfying.

No.5 in the Lew Griffin SeriesAs Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he has just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper? Somewhere in the Crescent City - and in the white supremacist movement crawling through it - there's an answer to the questions left by that shot that echoed through the night. But to get to it, Griffin is going to have to work with the only people offering help, people he knows he should avoid.

No.5 in the Lew Griffin SeriesAs Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he has just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper? Somewhere in the Crescent City - and in the white supremacist movement crawling through it - there's an answer to the questions left by that shot that echoed through the night. But to get to it, Griffin is going to have to work with the only people offering help, people he knows he should avoid.

In his old house in uptown New Orleans, Lew Griffin is alone again...or almost. He and Deborah are drifting apart. His son David has disappeared again, leaving behind a note that sounds final. Heading homeward from his retirement party, his friend, Don Walsh has been shot while interrupting a robbery. Worst of all, Lew himself is directionless, no longer teaching, with little to fill his days. He hasn't written anything in years. Even the attempt to discover the source of threatening letters sent to a friend leaves him feeling rootless and lost.And now Lew Griffin stands alone in a dark room, looking out. Behind him on the bed is a body. Wind pecks at the window. Traffic sounds drift aimlessly in. He thinks if he doesn't speak, doesn't think about what happened, somehow things will be alright again. He thinks about his own life, about the other's, about how the two of them came to be here...In a series as much about identity as it is about crime, Sallis has held a mirror up to society and culture, while at the same time setting Lew Griffin the task of discovering who he is. As the detective stands in that dark room, the answers begin to come clear and the highly acclaimed series builds to a brilliantly constructed climax that will resonate in readers' minds long after the story is finished.

John le Carré meets the Coen brothers in this inspired road novel about secret agents on a mission to find meaning in their lives....David (as he's currently known) was one of an elite corps of spies trained during the chilliest days of the Cold War. But those days are long gone and for nine years he has been an ordinary, upstanding citizen....Until, that is, a phone call in the middle of the night awakens him. The only other known survivor of that elite corps has gone rogue. They need David to stop him.What ensues is an existential cat-and-mouse game played out across the board that is the American landscape. Haunting, visceral, and utterly magnificent, Death Will Have Your Eyes is a novel about spying in the way that All the King's Men is a novel about politics - ultimately, its agents spy into that oddity known as the human condition.

'I drive. That's what I do. All I do.' 'Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room....'Thus begins Drive, a new novella by James Sallis. Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., the story is, according to Sallis, "...about a guy who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. In classic noir fashion, he is double-crossed and, though before he has never participated in the violence ('I drive. That's all.'), he goes after the ones who doublecrossed and tried to kill him."

James Sallis is one of our great stylists and storytellers, whose deep interest in human nature is expressed in the powerful stories of men too often at odds with themselves as well as with the world around them.Where Turner moved is one of America's lost places, halfway between Memphis and forever. A place where you can bury the past and escape the pain of human contact, where you are left alone unless you want company, where conversation happens only when there's something to say, where you can sit and watch an owl fly silently across the face of the moon. Where Turner hoped to forget that he was a cop, a psychotherapist, and an ex-con.There was no major crime to speak of until Sheriff Lonnie Bates arrived on Turner's porch with a bottle of bourbon and a problem: A drifter's body has been found brutally and ritualistically murdered, and Bates needs Turner's help. Thrust back into the middle of what he left behind, Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.Cypress Grove is lyrical, moving, and filled with the sense of place and character that only our finest writers can achieve. It is proof positive that the acclaim James Sallis has enjoyed for years is richly deserved.