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This page lists novels that feature the sometime private investigator Lew Griffin.

The Long-Legged Fly

James Sallis

1992

A Lew Griffin novel.

"There are those who vanish into the steaming New Orleans night - and it is part time Private Investigator and blues aficionado Lew Griffin's job to find them. A prisoner of the bottle, his past and his skin, Griffin knows every hidden corner of Hell. But the disappearance of a militant woman activist is about to carry the brilliant, tormented P.I. ever closer to a nightmare that threatens to hit him where he lives...and more brutally than he ever imagined possible."

Moth

James Sallis

1993

A Lew Griffin novel.

"One of the very few lights from Lew Griffin's dark and violent past has flickered out. His one-time lover, LaVerne 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 ex-PI 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."

Black Hornet

James Sallis

1994

A Lew Griffin novel.

"In a time of anger, activism, and bitter racial tensions, a sniper has appeared to heat up an already sweltering New Orleans summer - by tearing up innocent people like paper targets. The shooter's sixth fatality is cut down while she is walking at Lew Griffin's side. the victim was white. Griffin is black - a reluctant young PI whose poet's heart has already been hardened by amoral injustice and heavy drink. And though he had only just met his unfortunate companion, Griffin knows it's up to him to find her killer - before a madman puts the final match to a volatile urban tinderbox."

Eye of the Cricket

James Sallis

1997

A Lew Griffin novel.

"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."

Bluebottle

James Sallis

1999

A Lew Griffin novel.

"As Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he has just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper? Somewhere in the Crescent City - and in the white supremacist movement crawling through it - there's an answer to the questions left by that shot that echoed through the night. But to get to it, Griffin is going to have to work with the only people offering help, people he knows he should avoid."

Ghost of a Flea

James Sallis

2000

A Lew Griffin novel.

"In his old house in uptown New Orleans, Lew Griffin is alone again - or almost. He and Deborah are drifting apart. His son David has disappeared again, leaving behind a note that sounds final. Heading homeward from his retirement party, his friend, Don Walsh has been shot while interrupting a robbery. Worst of all, Lew himself is directionless, no longer teaching, with little to fill his days. He hasn't written anything in years. Even the attempt to discover the source of threatening letters sent to a friend leaves him feeling rootless and lost. And now Lew Griffin stands alone in a dark room, looking out. Behind him on the bed is a body. Wind pecks at the window. Traffic sounds drift aimlessly in. He thinks if he doesn't speak, doesn't think about what happened, somehow things will be alright again. He thinks about his own life, about the other's, about how the two of them came to be here."