Black Hornet

Lew Griffin #3

by James Sallis

A sniper appears in 1960s New Orleans, a sun-baked city of Black Panthers and other separatists. Five people have been fatally shot. When the sixth victim is killed, Lew Griffin is standing beside her. He's black and she's white, and though they are virtual strangers, it is left to Griffin to avenge her death, or at least to try and make some sense of it. His unlikely allies include a crusading black journalist, a longtime supplier of mercenary arms and troops, and bail bondsman Frankie DeNoux. Yet it is the character of Lew Griffin that takes center stage, as in each of Sallis's highly praised books. He is by now, well on the way to becoming what he will be; violent, kind, contradictory, alcoholic. Both naïve and wise, he is a man cursed by unspeakable demons. Nonetheless, he is seemingly encircled by redemptive angels, awaiting an opening.

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Noir, Fiction, Detective, Historical Fiction, Audiobook

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

James Sallis (born 21 December 1944 in Helena, Arkansas) is an American crime writer, poet and musician, best known for his series of novels featuring the character Lew Griffin and set in New Orleans, and for his 2005 novel Drive, which was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Black Hornet, I'm realizing that the Lew Griffin series is entirely the written memories of an older man looking back on and contemplating major events in his life. While the first novel, The Long-Legged Fly , jumps around in time to study a changing man through different decades and the second novel, Moth , expands more on the 1990's part of his life, in Black Hornet, Lew remembers more events from the 1960's, expanding on the first part of Fly. What struck me, was how much the book actually did feel like a memory, even more so than the previous stories. Lew's narration seems to be unstuck in time, paralleling the past and present, cross-referencing not only things that have happened, but events to come and filling in some of the blanks between events that we are aware of from the previous books (maybe this is material for the later novels in the series?). All of this gives a great sense of an old man looking back on life with waning memory.

This story focuses on the younger Lew of the 1960's section of Fly, a raging drinker and debt collector, who is still far away from the best-selling novelist, professor, and sometime private detective that we know from the 1990's. He meets Esmé Dupuy in a bar, a white journalist who he has a drink with but who is soon gunned down right in front of him, the latest victim of a sniper that's been terrorizing New Orleans shooting white people. Lew is set on tracking the man down (an event that is alluded to in Moth). And in doing so, we get to witness Lew meeting different people that we know will be important friends in the times to come.

This book has a very different atmosphere from the previous books in the series. There's more of a focus on race and racial identity and protest, probably coming out of being set in the racially-charged and political '60's. Lew finds himself adrift in this world, bumping into militant groups like the Panthers, and even meeting and rubbing shoulders with a socially-angry Chester Himes at an event for the author, a scene that turns out to be a great homage to one of Sallis's inspirations. Although the book is pretty short, I took my time with it and soaked in Sallis's passionate prose, enjoying yet another great book in a series focusing on identity and memory.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometime I live in de city,
Sometimes I live in town.
Sometime I take a great notion
To jump into de river an’ drown.

A sleazy bar in a rundown part of New Orleans. An old man with a guitar on a tiny scene, singing the blues. Lew Griffin, a freelance muscle man chasing debtors and bail jumpers for an old friend in the business, comes often to listen to his friend Buster Robinson over a drink. This night is different though – he strikes a conversation with an interesting woman, and she is killed by a mysterious sniper as soon as they leave the bar together. She is the sixth victim of this serial killer, and nobody seems to be doing much effort to catch him. Lew is angry, even more so after the police beat him up in custody for being at the crime scene and black.
They say a man alone cannot fight against the system, but then who else will? Lew starts to chase leads on his own, with some support from his bail bondsman friend, a rogue cop and a journalist who worked with the victim.

>>><<<>>><<<

First of all, this is my third Lew Griffin story, but it feels as fresh and as intense as a new discovery. There is no continuity to the series, other than the fact that these stories are told in flashback from the perspective of an older, more world-weary Lew. Sallis is unique for me in the way he can pack a punch in so little space. He goes easily from describing a knife fight in a bar or a chase across rooftops to a melancholic, understated love scene (with the returning character of La Verne), from political commentary to literary theory. And it works – Lew Griffin is more than a simple gumshoe - he loves reading books and observing current events, finding connexions between private drama and social movements, a first person narrative that is light on dialogue and prefers a poetic image to a couple of pages of dry descriptive passages.

A couple of pages in the first chapter are enough to establish mood and context : blues for the soul and the background of the Civil Rights Movement for the crime.

... one parochial incident all but lost among a hundred others in those years of mounting violence. The first Kennedy had already gone down. The Watts riots were just around the corner. Memphis was waiting for Martin Luther King, L.A. for Robert Kennedy, a lectern in the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, for Malcolm X.

Who cares then about another journalist killed at night in New Orleans as the Tet Offensive starts in Vietnam, Olympic athletes are suspended for giving a black-power salute and civil rights workers are killed in Mississippi? Maybe a ‘Black Wasp’ !

The title of the novel is then explained as inspired by a science-fiction novel Lew Griffin was reading at the time : Wasp by Eric Frank Russell [which of course I have now added to my waiting list]

Burrowing in at the lowest levels, a lone man infiltrates a distant world’s corrupt society. Through various ruses, surfacing momentarily here and there – an irritant, a catalyst, a wasp – he brings about discord in the governed and invisibly guides them toward revolution.

But who is the Hornet? Is it Lew Griffin, the gumshoe who fights alone for justice on these dark, mean streets? Or is it the mysterious gunman who fights the system from a rooftop, killing strangers and starting a one-man revolution through anarchy? It’s so easy to say these people are crazy. Who in his right man would do a horrible series of crimes like this? But Lew wants answers to more than the identity of the killer. What are his motives? Without understanding what made this man go insane, we are doomed to repeat history [and mass shootings]

Americans once believed a single man might change the world. That was what our frontier myths, our stories about rugged individualists, our rough-edged heroes, cowboys, private eyes, were all about. America believed it could change the world. Believed this was its destiny.
Now we were ass over head in a war no one could win and after twenty years of waiting for the Big Red Boogie Man to gobble us up at any moment, we’d begun destroying ourselves instead.

I could describe the steps Lew takes in order to go undercover, tap his informers in the neighbourhood, put himself in harm’s way as a target to lure the killer out. But I found the way Sallis includes the commentary to the novel right in the middle of the investigation to be more fascinating – the kind of metafiction I loved in Samuel R. Delany’s ‘Dhalgren’ and ‘Neveryon’.

Not long after, in a book Hosie brought around, I would read Borges’ story of Martin Fierro. After pursuing for years a fabulous desperado, Fierro at last brings him to ground. But suddenly he realizes that all along, all these years, it’s himself he has been pursuing and, turning, taking his place beside the desperado, he fights at Cruz’s side against his own men.

Instead of going on rants about racial injustice, Sallis offers us a literary evening with Chester Himes, plus a few reasons why he was an angry black writer. Instead of explaining the essence of ‘noir’ literature to the uninitiated, he gives Lew new books to read, in particular Camus , which inspire the detective towards introspection:

It takes a while for us to realize that our lives have no plot. At first we imagine ourselves into great struggles of darkness and light, heroes in our Levi’s or pajamas, impervious to the gravity that pulls down all others. Later on we contrive scenes in which the world’s events circle like moons about us – like moths about our porch lights. Then, at last, painfully, we begin to understand that the world doesn’t even acknowledge our existence. We are the things that happen to us, the people we’ve known, nothing more.

Finally, instead of a clear case of heroes and villains, of white-hat cowboys against marauding redskins, he gives me yet another new author to check out by quoting Juan Goytisolo on the narrative art:

The unbridgeable distance between act and language, the demands of the written text itself, inevitably and insidiously degrade faithfulness to reality into mere artistic exercise, sincerity into mere virtuosity, moral rigor into aesthetics. Endowed with later coherence, bolstered with clever continuities of plot and resonance, our reconstructions of the past will always be a kind of betrayal.

So Lew Griffin puts down the pen, closes the pages of the book and opens the door to a beautiful woman bearing a bottle of whisky. I will not begrudge him his rest after an emotionally exhausting case, but I hope he will be back with another book.

>>><<<>>><<<

Theodore Sturgeon – “More Than Human” is another science-fiction book referenced by Lew, and so my list continues growing.

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lew is on the hunt for a sniper who’s taken out several people, including a reporter Lew was going to have dinner with.
This story takes place before Long-Legged Fly, and Lew is distinguishing himself as a guy who gets things done, and is dangerous doing it. He’s also slowly becoming the alcoholic we meet later. Lew is helped on his search for the sniper by a police officer, a reporter and a few others.
Though the plot is a little light, the prose is spare, philosophical and humourous as ever. Sallis crafts tight sentence after sentence with a wealth of observation and characterization. I particularly loved the dry humour that so often appears in the character interactions.
Will I read the next Lew Griffin story? Definitely.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes for effect, abjuring motivation, consistency, good sense.”

Black Hornet, the third memoir of black, New Orleans based, some time PI Lew Griffin. From his comfortable garden apartment in an unspecified "now" mentioned in Long-Legged Fly, enjoying the fruits of his genre writing success and the adoration of his literary students Lew is taking us back, way back to the 1960s, a time of political and racial upheaval, a time of Panthers, of an angry Chester Himes writing rallying calls to his de facto segregated American brothers from his Paris apartment, and in to that maelstrom comes a sniper serial killer who just so happens to shoot a woman of Lew's acquaintance whilst he walks next to her.

When considering this book and this series from Sallis it's important to understand that these are far more than your standard pulp potboiler. Sallis and Griffin have a constant philosophical struggle with their existence and the world around them and despite Black Hornet not reaching the depths of existential despair found in the first two memoirs it does discuss the concepts of identity and fate, as well as the changing nature of what it means to be black in America. It's not however making any grand political statements instead simply observing the inequalities that happen and the conflict within the individual. And of course there's the reference to the work of Juan Goytisolo and his discussion of memory and the foolishness of trying to imprison memories via the written word. It's a handy tool for a literary author writing in a genre that is inherently flawed in terms of needing drama and effect and an occasional faithlessness to reality to succeed, almost a get out of jail free card perhaps, but the skill of Sallis' writing is that it doesn't feel dishonest or deus ex machina like, it's a seamless blending of character, memory and plot that consistently succeeds in entertaining the willing reader.

There are only six of these? No fair!

"At last, painfully, we begin to understand that the world doesn't even acknowledge our existence. We are the things that happen to us, the people we've known, nothing more."

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read, originally read in 1995.

In this the third installment of James Sallis's noir series about Lew Griffin we are taken back to an earlier stint in his exploits in New Orleans. Back to the early sixties when the tide of race relations between black and white were beginning to come to a boil.

Something that Mr. Sallis does in this series is bring us, the reader, an awareness of other books and literature to awareness. There are a couple of pages dedicated to Chester Himes visiting on a lecture to New Orleans and Lew is hired as a body guard for the occasion. Allow me to mention at this point that Mr. Sallis has written an excellent biography of Himes and his work.

Back to the plot. A serial killer is loose in New Orleans and is killing white folks. Shoots em right in the head. Bam. One of the killers recent victims is new female friend of Lew's. So, the hunt is on.

Mr. Sallis's writing is exceptional, vibrant, well thought out and is a pleasure to read. I can't say enough about how well he creates mood, character and depicts events throughout this series of books.

What a joy to re-discover them and join Lew Griffin in his adventures through the dark side.

This copy kindly signed by the author.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real find! It was a sales clerk at a long closed bookstore that recommended James Sallis to me, and I casually picked up a copy of Black Hornet. Now, some years later, I read Sallis story about Lew Griffin's attempts to track down a sniper in mid-Sixties new Orleans.

There's something different about this book: At the same time, it's hard-edged like Chester Himes (who actually makes a guest appearance in the book) and yet literate as all get-out. Griffin reads some really good stuff while he's trying to get a bead on the sniper without getting done in by the police or any number of tough guys who come knocking at his little place while he's trying vainly to get some sleep and recover from his last concussion and broken ribs.

Sallis, whose photographs make him look white, throws me for a loop. As I read the book, I was certain that he was Black -- but I have been wrong before, and often. He has an edgy style that cuts through anything that could slow down the story. I love his writing:

It takes a while for us to realize that our lives have no plot. At first we imagine ourselves into great struggles of darkness and light, heroes in our Levi's or pajamas, impervious to the gravity that pulls down all others. Later on we contrive scenes in which the world's events circle like moons about us -- like moths about our porch lights. Then at last, painfully, we begin to understand that the world doesn't even acknowledge our existence. We are the things that happen to us, the people we've known, nothing more.

I think I'm going to like reading more of his books. It seems he's also published poetry. An interesting guy, well worth looking into.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third Lew Griffin book steps back in time and follows Lew in the sixties. This is my favorite of the volumes as it introduces all the characters and provides the usual literary references (Himes and Borges), and mix of intimate character study and existentialism but married to an evocation of the era and a consistent plot involving a sniper (that most existential and terrifying of all mass murderers.). Could be good for first timers to this strange and wonderful series. How much of this series does Griffin spend in a hospital?

[Mohammed Abdikhader Firdhiye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another brilliant mix of noir and existentialism,character study. Reading this series is reading great Noir but also is like reading a Camus novel at the same time.

I have the next novel in the series but i cant read it now, being so real in human emotions makes them a heavy emotional read despite the books are less than 200 pages. I need something lighter in tone after this.

[David Ärlemalm]

Kaffe, bourbon, New Orleans, musik, en hel del litteratur och lite crime på det. Sallis när han är som bäst, vilket även gäller för de två föregående delarna i serien om Lew Griffin.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Count me as a James Sallis fan, please.

[Owain Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As expected, Sallis slays it again. Race riots, snipers, heat, coffee, booze and characters called things like Doo-Whop, Hosie and Papa. Book three hits the ground in1968, tensions are high in New Orleans and Lew finds himself in the middle of the chaos. Sallis' genius is that he gives us an account of events in the form of a memoir, which means that Lew's meditations and wanderings down life's weird paths are really what these novels are about - one man's daily struggles adrift in the sea of history. Another thing I really like about Sallis, and particularly the Lew Griffin books, is that he gives you a kind of further reading list scattered through the narrative - Chester Himes even gets a cameo in this one. Three more to go and I can't wait to read them, but I will.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Dom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love these books and really getting into this series

A cult series with sprinkles of memorys that I have never lived throughout it.

Ahh these books make me slightly happier.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the Black Hornet, I met Lew Griffin again, a man who the word complex doesn’t go far enough to describe.  In his life, he has been many things – soldier, private investigator, criminal, author – and trouble always seems to come knocking.
The Black Hornet can be read as a standalone, and if you do, you will know non of these things about Griffin because this book takes us back to the beginning, before he was anything but a former soldier trying to make a life in a city that doesn’t seem to care much about any of his residents.
New Orleans in the sixties sounds dirty, and hard, and not a place I would want to be but it suits Griffin and the people he meets perfectly, and it serves as a perfect backdrop for the civil rights movement that is brewing and the way life for black men is changing, but maybe not quick enough.
The setting, and the story, suit the way James Sallis writes to a tee.  He doesn’t waste words, with short sentences, short chapters and short books (this one runs at 150 pages), yet I never feel like I am missing out on anything.  Plot lines move along quickly, we me rushing to keep up and characters appear fully formed and expecting you to know who they are and what they are about.
It took me a while the first book round to get into the style but now I have to say I look forward to it.  I know what I’ll get and I like it.  It reminds me of the way people like Humphrey Bogart talked back in the day and of gumshoe novels.  Simple is the wrong word to describe it, it’s not, but it feels like that on the surface, whilst under it a lot is said and you have plenty to chew on and think about, long after the last page.
Saying all that, I know this book won’t be for everyone.  Most characters don’t have much in the way of descriptions for example, you have to piece people together with the bits you know, which are given sparingly (so LaVerne, Griffins girlfriend starts to form when I find out about her red dress, which he finds hanging up in another mans flat).
Then there’s the fact that the main story isn’t always the main story (to not sound cryptic) because it’s really about the characters and what drives them – usually it’s sadness but with a fair bit of hope thrown in.  When I got to the end here, the who the sniper was part, I was slightly disappointed because it meant the book was over and I didn’t want it to be.  I wanted to stay in New Orleans, seedy as it was, drinking bourbon and shooting the breeze with unsavoury characters.
For me, though, this is another winner from Sallis, who is one of my favourite authors.  This was a great addition to a series with a character I find compelling and with a story I couldn’t put down.  I loved it!

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly traditional hard boiled narrative taken in unexpected directions by its genuine philosophical tone (as opposed to the quasi-philosophical noodling that often characterise the genre), a wealth of literary references, the occasional flash-forward (the protagonist, it becomes evident, is narrating a 1960s-set case from much later in life), and a focus on morality and compromise. That it clocks in at a compressed 180 pages adds to its weight.

[Roybot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet Jesus, this book. Set in the 1960s in the city of New Orleans, Black Hornet introduces Lew Griffin, sometime PI (technically, this is the third book of the series, but it's set prior to the first two, and it's the first one I picked up, so... introduces it is). Sallis is seriously channeling Chandler at times on this one, and it's brilliant. Griffin is narrating the story from the future, looking back at the case and trying to make sense of it all, a conceit that works excellently here, where he's able to comment on relationships with the clarity that only comes after it's far too late to act on.

Only much later, after almost thirty years with and without her, and when it was too late, did I realize that LaVerne had saved my life--that in some strange, indecipherable way we had saved each other's lives.

And in the years before that realization came, without meaning to I would hurt her terribly again and again, the same way I'd repeatedly damage myself. Each year, the ground pulls harder. Each year, the burden of what we do and fail to do helps push us down.

In Lew, Sallis has created a fantastic character. Sure, he drinks like Nick and Nora and he waxes philosophical like Marlowe, but it's not just ennui and existential angst that's bothering him. He's struggling with the question of racial identity in a world where his role as a black man is constantly shifting. The politics of race are handled deftly, here, and an array of perspectives, from the apathetic to the radical, are presented for Lew (and, of course, the reader) to chew on and ponder. I can't speak to the authenticity of his portrayal of New Orleans in the 60s (having never been to that city, and having not been alive at the time at any rate), but the struggles he describes resonate, and are particularly apropos given the current social landscape.

A must-read for fans of the Chandler-esque "thinking man's private dick".

[Tolkien InMySleep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Economical, sharp, vibrant

[Mark Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Black Hornet was first published in 1994, seven years before James Sallis published the biography Chester Himes: A Life.

But Sallis was already into Himes’ work. In 1993, Sallis published Difficult Lives, a series of essays about Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and the aforementioned Himes.

But, wait. By 1993, Sallis had been reading Himes for 25 years. In a 2007 interview on the Compulsive Reader website, Sallis said he discovered Himes in 1968 at about the time he was turning away from science fiction and “literary” fiction (at least, at the time) and discovered Ross Macdonald, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, and others of the crime fiction ilk.

So if you’re James Sallis, and if you enjoy playing around with the so-called rules of writing crime fiction, why not stick Himes in one of your novels too?

Especially if your main character is deep thinker Lew Griffin?

Here is Griffin in Black Hornet, thinking back about listening to Himes in a small auditorium at Dillard University in New Orleans:

“When the applause died and he looked up, his eyes were dark, intense and full, glimmers of emotion and understanding spilling out from them even as they swept in the finest details of the physical world around them.

“Vitriol? Impassioned speech? Anger?

“You better believe it.

“But at the same time a rare truth: this gentle cultivated voice at first so low we could barely hear it, urging us on toward what we might be, imploring us to settle for nothing less than the best within us. To recognize that we had been set against ourselves, turned into our own worst enemy. Whenever walls get torn down, he said the bricks are simply carried off elsewhere, another wall put up.”

And then Sallis gives Himes the microphone and, well, these few lines may be the heart of Black Hornet:

“If our plumbing for truth, whether as a writer, like myself, or simply as individuals looking back over our experience—if this plumbing for truth reveals within the Negro personality homicidal maniac, lust, a pathetic sense of inferiority, arrogance, hatred, fear and self-despite, we must recognize this as the effect of oppression on the human personality. For these are the daily horrors, the daily realities, the daily experiences—the life—of black men and women in America.”

(Did Himes actually utter those words? I emailed James Sallis and he confirmed that he might have tweaked a word or two but the words were from an address Himes gave at a university, though not Dillard.)

So we have one smart, meditative-minded fictional black erstwhile slacker young detective (Griffin) drinking in the observations of a real-life black crime fiction writer known for not holding back and also known for troubling, often militant commentary (Himes).

And Griffin, in this third novel in the series, is not only thinking about Himes he’s thinking, throughout Black Hornet, about the state of protest, the state of Civil Rights, and recalling what it was like to walk through front doors for the first time in his life. And he’s recalling that the struggle was just beginning. “We breathed the high, rich air of social challenge, justice, freedom, inalienable rights. But that road, we discovered, penetrated just so far into the wilderness.”

There is plenty of meditation in the Lew Griffin novels because Griffin is, as I mentioned, not an action hero. His movements are efficient, pointed. He is not afraid to stop. He’s got time to think whether it’s in a New Orleans bar listening to the blues or in his home reading Camus or Borges. Sallis lets Griffin take existentialist detours relating to identity, race, culture, class, oppression, and revolution. Or the topic of memory, which infuses many pages of Black Hornet.

As the story winds down,Griffin pulls out Juan Goytisolo’s autobiography, Realms of Strife.

(Oh, by the way, if you’re trying to whittle down your stack of books to read, avoid the Lew Griffin novels at your peril.)

Griffin summarizes:

“Memory, Goytisolo writes at the end of his story, cannot arrest the flow of time, it can only recreate set scenes, encapsulate privileged moments, arrange memories and incidents in some arbitrary manner that, word by word, will form a book. The unbridgeable distance between act and language, the demands of the written text itself, inevitably and insidiously degrade faithfulness to reality into mere artistic exercise, sincerity into mere virtuosity, moral rigor into aesthetics … Put down your pen, Goytisolo says, break off the narrative, limit the damage: for silence alone can keep intact our illusion of truth.”

Well, the brain’s perceptions of events over time has been one of Griffin’s concerns from way back on page five, when he started worrying about the “watery soup” of memory even as he goes on to recount the incidents in New Orleans in 1968 about tracking down an assassin known as The Rooftop Killer. (Black Hornet is a prequel of sorts.)

Yes, there is a plot for our chill Griffin, who is self-motivated in this story because the latest victim of the sniper was walking next to him when she was killed. Griffin figures stuff out in his own methodical, Type B way. He’s never too engrossed, however, to rise above the events and see himself in a bigger storyline while also acknowledging “that our lives have no plot … We are the things that happen to us, the people we’ve known, nothing more.”

Imagine if writers were prohibited from developing characters who didn’t conform to their own culture and background? We are so deep in Lew Griffin’s psyche, thanks in part to Chester Himes and Albert Camus as guiding lights to his soul, that we never doubt his three-dimensionality or his grounded yearning to understand, well, everything.

Here’s a thought—writers need more license, not less. As writers S.A. Cosby and Alex Segura discussed at a recent conference in San Diego, however, they need to put in the work and they need to be accountable for the words they write, the stories they cobble together. They need empathy, too.

Here’s another thought. This one is from James Sallis from that same interview mentioned above:

“Crime fiction … gives access to a straightforward skeleton of plot that’s able to hold as little or as much weight as you wish to pack on; and it’s connected more directly to the archetypes within us, which can be a source of tremendous power.”

Read Black Hornet and see if you can find one false note or anywhere that Sallis isn’t “plumbing for truth.”

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of James Sallis's Lew Griffin mysteries. Griffin is a black detective in New Orleans and is one of the most original hard boiled characters in the mystery/noir field. Griffin is a flawed character but with a lot of sympathetic elements. These are, to some extent, literary mysteries, and are as much of an exploration of character and setting as they are mystery. I highly recommend them. My favorite mystery series, next to the Travis McGee series.

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third book in the series takes us back in time to Lew Griffin's earlier years, in some ways offering the reader an origin story and insight into the beginnings of some of his continuing relationships.

As always, the writing is beautiful both in its content and its execution. The story is simple, the characters complex.

Another gem.

[Andrew Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

How I love this series. Short on plot, long on philosophical musings about the nature of life and the human condition. Prose like this keeps me coming back for more James Sallis:

“It takes a while for us to realize that our lives have no plot. At first we imagine ourselves into great struggles of darkness and light, heroes in our Levi’s or pajamas, impervious to the gravity that pulls down all others. Later on we contrive scenes in which the world’s events circle like moons about us-like moths about our porch lights. Then at last, painfully, we begin to understand that the world doesn’t even acknowledge our existence. We are the things that happen to us, the people we’ve known, nothing more.”

As an extra bonus I end up adding multiple books to my TBR list with each novel. Books I have discovered from this series:

Black No More
On the Yard
More Than Human
Sanctuary
Wasp

It just keeps getting better and look forward to each installment as I work through this series with one book a month.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third in the Lew Griffin series about a black private investigator in Louisiana. What is so interesting about this story is , being set in 1968 , it seems to have particular resonance given events that are occurring today in America as the country appears still to carry the weight of racial inequality on it's shoulders.
In this book Lew is in a bar and gets to talking to a woman reporter and as they step outside something shocking occurs which leads to Lew's arrest and being held in custody without charge and with appalling racial insult due to the colour of his skin by the Officers. When eventually release he starts to track down a killer in the city which has racial undertones in a country in which over those years has seen the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcolm x.
For a very short book which I read very quickly it addresses in it's pulp style clothing a story which has deeper issues at it's heart and certainly left me wondering how little seems to have changed in a generation.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Hornet is the third book in the Lew Griffin series set in New Orleans. In this outing, it the early 1960s and a sniper is territorizing the city, killing random strangers. Griffin is pulled into the hunt for the killer when a white journalist he is talking to is shot dead. While the plot centres on Griffin’s search for the marksman, the heart of the story is the excavation of Griffin’s character, his philosophical musings on life, and what it means to be black in the Deep South. Griffin is a man of contradictions who fears close relationships and rarely takes the easy path. He drinks to excess and has a habit of finding violence. Yet he is kind, seeks justice, has a literary bent, and is deeply reflexive. While he gets results, he doesn’t always get answers. The result is a thoughtful, existential tale told in evocative prose. There’s no great mystery to the tale, the pleasure is in its observations and telling.

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read the Lew Griffin books in order, but I don't think I'll be reading any further. I've heard such good things about these books that I have persisted up to the third book hoping they would find their stride, or I would suddenly "get them", but it turns out they are not for me.
I don't care for Lew: he's (almost unbelievably) well read and he's also (luckily) rock hard at fighting. I like my protagonists a bit more flawed than this guy, who beats up the bad guys effortlessly then stares at his belly button until the plot works itself out...

[La Lectora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Está bien escrito pero nada más : Ni me ha convencido el estilo narrativo, ni la trama que empieza en una historia , se va a otra sin articular con la anterior y sin resolver nada, además me resultan liosos sus saltos en el tiempo y el personaje no logra interesarme: Pega a los malos brutalmente , le pegan , le disparan, bebe y sigue vivo como un superhéroe divagando en muchas páginas que sobran. El final es precipitado y no es final :En mitad de una conversación, el libro se termina y ya! .No creo que siga leyendo libros de esta serie ,no son para mí.

[Susan Ovans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the writing, loved the characters, but found the plot and timeline confusing. Apparently, this is the third novel in a series that is as much a riff on existentialism and literature as it is a noir thriller set in New Orleans. Like the central character, Lew Griffin, I get my reading material from the public library. So I'll have to hunt down the first book in this series to see if Griffin and I are to be friends or mere acquaintances. Thus far, at least, I like his company.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as enjoyable as others of Sallis' books but still darkly engaging. I realized half way through that Black Hornet was part of a series, damnit, and I hadn't read the previous books, nor do I have the next ones haha...Oh well, will keep an eye out. I like the main character except that he seems to lumber from one horrible injury to the next....

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 3 out of 5]

About as close to run-of-the-mill as Sallis ever gets, which isn't all that close.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much hooked on Sallis and Lew Griffin now. Lew takes some hellicious beatings this time out, but as usual, he gets his man in an entirely unsatisfying way.

[Mickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

book 12