Eye of the Cricket
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | James Sallis |
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| Subtitle | A Lew Griffin Mystery |
| Publisher | Walker & Company |
| Honors | |
| Lew 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… | |
Lew 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.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
His fourth book in the Lew Griffin series proves once again that James Sallis is one of the most death-defying writers working in the mystery genre. Readers who have the persistence to untangle a twisted time line and go with the peculiar flow of Sallis’s unique prose will find many rewards. Griffin, a New Orleans-based, 50-ish African American novelist, teacher, and occasional detective, dots his twisting tale with dozens of references to the act of writing, plus verbal samplings of everyone from James Joyce to Emily Dickinson. Griffin is obsessed with searches for missing children: a 15-year-old boy named Delany who has dropped into a dangerous world of drugs; the somewhat older son of Griffin’s best friend, who also seems determined to destroy himself; and David, Griffin’s own, long-gone son. Looking for a connection to David, Griffin abandons his hard-won sobriety and sets out on a drunken quest through some of New Orleans’s seediest sectors. There’s not much mystery in this long section, but it leads to an ending that will have you on the edge of your seat. Previous books in the Griffin series available in paperback include Black Hornet and Moth.
Barnes and Noble
Poetic, complex, and multidimensional, Sallis’s insect-titled crime novels about New Orleans detective Lew Griffin are unlike any other you’re likely to crack open. The main treat is also the main mystery: What is it that makes Griffin, a middle-aged African American intellectual, tick? Told by him in the first person, Cricket, number four in the series, is ostensibly about his search for several missing young people, one of whom is his son. But there is no linear progression to the investigation. Instead, as filtered through Griffin’s quick, contrary, memory-obsessed mind, the story shifts, switches, leaps back and forth in time. Peppered with images of intriguing events from Griffin’s past, as well as references that range from Andre Gide to Woody Woodpecker, the story takes us to a conclusion that is both rewarding and, strange for Griffin, uplifting. —Dick Lochte
