Cripple Creek

Starred review from January 30, 2006
In Sallis's beautifully written second book to feature Turner, an ex-cop and ex-con (after 2004's Cypress Grove
), Turner is working as a deputy sheriff in Cripple Creek, Tenn., a small town where crime is minor and strictly local. Then, late one night, Sheriff Don Lee arrests drunk driver Judd Kurtz with $200,000 in a nylon gym bag hidden in the trunk of his car. Kurtz breaks out of the town jail, seriously wounding two officers in the process. Turner's investigation leads him to an organized crime connection in nearby Memphis that enmeshes him in a web of escalating violence. Sallis's working method is to simply let the cameras roll, depicting the lives of Turner, his banjo-picking girlfriend, his eccentric co-workers and Cripple Creek itself, as everyone goes about their business. Small moments are recorded as faithfully as large, and stories from earlier days mix with the ongoing crimes and misdemeanors of the present. A structural sleight of hand toward the end may at first confuse but is pretty amazing once the reader catches on. Author tour.

John Turner, ex-cop, ex-con, Vietnam vet, and former therapist, makes his way to Cripple Creek to lick his wounds and keep a low profile. In the second novel featuring Turner, he's back in law enforcement as a sheriff's deputy. When a prisoner escapes from the local jail, Turner tracks him to Memphis and runs into problems with the Mob. In spite of frequent flashbacks into Turner's past life and violent episodes in the present, narrator Alan Nebelthau turns in a low-key, down-to-earth performance. He doesn't DO character voices, he BECOMES characters. Nebelthau offers a thoughtful, perceptive Turner, whether he's spending time with his lover, Val, or fighting the corruption of organized crime. Spare, artful prose combined with an honest, understated performance makes this must listening. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine