Review: The Long-Legged Fly

The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I imagine the subtitle of this is "The Life and Times of Lew Griffin." The Long-Legged Fly is set up like a collection of short tales, capturing four glimpses of Griffin's life. We're introduced to him in 1964, when he's a young man with a grim reputation. He's a hard, tough man, well versed in the language of violence, and he's contacted to locate a missing author. In 1970, we find Griffin in his air-conditioned office, working for himself. He's set up well, and contacted to locate a missing girl of 16. By 1984, Griffin has fallen, and fallen hard. He wakes up in detox, and finds himself living in a halfway house, when one of the other residents asks him to help locate his missing sister. Six years later, in 1990, Griffin seems to be in a calmer place. He's given up PI work and passing his time writing, but a call from his ex-wife sends him back to tracking down his missing son.

The mysteries themselves are remarkable only in that they fail, utterly to be remarkable. They're all missing person cases (I leave it up to you to figure out what, if anything that means), but the cases, and Griffin's work on them, feel sparse at the best of times. The cases aren't the real draw, here, anyway. Like some of the later Chandler books, the real story is about the characters. This isn't a mystery, it's an examination of a man's life. There's richness and complexity to the portrait that develops; Griffin is at times profoundly troubled, and the sorrow that seems to follow him takes a toll on him through the years. At one point he wonders if our whole lives are spent with our best years behind us. It's a serious question in a life filled with sadness and regrets. And one with no easy answer.

That this seems to have flown under my radar for so long is tragic; Griffin easily deserves mention alongside the likes of Scudder and Marlowe. Highly recommend.





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