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.
A propos de l’auteur
James Sallis has published sixteen novels, multiple collections of short stories, essays, and poems, books of musicology, a biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau's novel Saint Glinglin. He has written about books for the LA Times, New York Times, and Washington Post, and for some years served as a books columnist for the Boston Globe. He has received a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon, the Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing, and the Grand Prix de Littérature policière.