Rating: 5/5
Review:
Involving, thoughtful and haunting
I found this a remarkable, haunting and extremely rewarding novel. I hadn't come across James Sallis before so didn't know what to expect and a description of the book might well have put me off. There is very little action but there is a mystery to be solved by both a contract killer in the last stages of terminal illness and a policeman whose wife is also about to die. We also see things from the point of view of a young teenage boy who has nothing whatsoever to do with the case, never meets or communicates with anyone involved, but has the killer's dreams. Against my expectations I found it extremely involving, thoughtful and very moving in places.
The pervading theme of terminal illness and the sense of neighbourhoods in decay give the book an elegiac feel. Sallis writes brilliantly in brief unaffected sentences and very readable prose. His characters drew me in from the start and I found them believable and engaging. He makes a lot of very shrewd observations about the way lives pan out, but makes them in an unobtrusive, deceptively simple way. For example, a rather world-weary detective is musing internally on his idealistic youth: "Big words, big ideas. Fit OK when you were young. And it wasn't that you outgrew them, it was just that after a while you just started looking silly wearing them." I liked that a lot, and similar things crop up throughout the book.
I though this was engrossing, wise and, in its own way, a real page-turner. Warmly recommended if you like a thoughtful and involving read which will stay with you long after you finish the book.
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