JAMES SALLIS – Black Hornet. Lew Griffin #3. Carroll & Graf, hardcover, 1994. Avon, paperback, 1996.

   Sallis is a poet, teacher, and critic, in addition to being a writer. Besides his two previous “mysteries,” he has written science fiction and a critical book about Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Chester Himes. He lives in New Orleans.

   The time is the late 60s, the place is New Orleans. Lew Griffin is eking out a living doing trace and repo work, living with a prostitute as much as he lives anywhere. He’s done a little time, and he’s done a little Army time, and he’s not headed much of anywhere.

   New Orleans is headed for trouble. Not long past [there was] a black sniper spree that left many dead and injured; now it seems [as though] someone else is shooting people. White people. One of them is a lady reporter whom Lew has met in a blues bar, and she’s shot as they walk out together. It’s personal now, something he’s unable to walk away from, and he begins to track down the faceless shooter.

   Black Hornet is a prequel of sorts to Sallis’s two previous Lew Griffin books, The Long-Legged Fly and Moth. The three form a disjointed narrative of Griffin’s life as a black man in New Orleans, and his progression from little more than a street tough to a professor.

   They are beautifully written, managing to fuse elements of hardboiled fiction with more literary forms in a wholly satisfactory manner. These are slender books, but good ones.

Bibliographic Note:   James Sallis has written three more in thw series since Barry wrote this review: Eye of the Cricket (1997), Bluebottle (1999) and Ghost of a Flea (2000).