The Mean Streets

by James Sallis

Walker & Company

January 2008

Sneak Preview

Weighing in at well under two hundred pages, Salt River is a little beauty that has been cut, polished and crafted into something that sparkles like a rare gem. Few novels (of whatever length) have either the clarity or value of this one.

Two years have passed since John Turner (Cypress Grove & Cripple Creek) witnessed the murder of his lover, Val Bjorn. Turner, ex-cop, ex-con and now acting sheriff of a small town on the edge of nowhere in rural Tennessee still mourns his loss. Sitting on bench along Main Street with his pal, Doc Oldham, the two men watch as a car piloted by Billy Bates the ne’er-do-well son of the former sheriff plows into the front of City Hall. The young driver dies from injuries sustained in the crash. What has Billy been up to in the months since he left Cypress Grove without a word to anyone? And why do two thugs from out-of-town attempt to kidnap his estranged wife? Turner’s banjo-playing friend, Eldon Brown, reappears as well. But Eldon’s barely one-step ahead of a Texas lawman who figures the black man to be responsible for the murder of an attorney down Arlington way.

A profound meditation on loss, on loyalty and on friendship, few authors could pack so much into such a slim volume. Missing much of what constitutes “action” in the genre today, Salt River nevertheless packs the kind of firepower that really counts – the kind that touches the heart and revitalizes the soul.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this