Turner

James Sallis, author of the Lew Griffin detective stories, has been praised as one of Southern literature's most original voices. In Cypress Grove, a murder with eerie connections to the past brings a man back to his calling. Turner was a homicide cop long ago, until he got mixed up in the wrong case and ended up behind bars himself. Now retired to a cabin in a small Southern town, Turner's been recruited by the local Sheriff to help solve a bizarre and gruesome case.

The small town where Turner has moved is the perfect hide-away for him to forget he was a cop, a psychotherapist and always an ex-con - until a body is found and Turner is thrust into the investigation and everything he thought he had left behind. Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.

Now Deputy Sheriff in his new town, Turner seems to be finally escaping his past and creating a new life for himself. That is, until a routine traffic stop results in a young man being sprung from jail, a brutal assault on the Sheriff and Turner risking everything in his wild pursuit. A novel as atmospheric and eventful as anything Sallis has written.

Two years have passed since Turner's lover, Val Bjorn, was shot as they sat together on the porch of his cabin. Then the sheriff's long-lost son comes ploughing down Main Street in what appears to be a stolen car. And waiting at Turner's cabin is his good friend, Eldon Brown. Haunted by his own ghosts, Turner nonetheless goes in search of a truth he's not sure he can live with.