Turner is an ex-cop, ex-con living somewhere in the hills between Memphis and Little Rock with a front porch, rickety straight-backed kitchen chairs, a cot for a bed, a few clothes, and a classic Whyte Laydie banjo (which he gives to a woman friend at the end of the novel because "Instruments should be played. Just as lives should be lived.")

When a bizarre murder takes place in the nearby little no-place town, the local sheriff asks for Turner’s "big city Memphis" detective help. Reluctantly, he agrees, and the story goes from there.

Sallis knows his music, knows his dialogue, and knows one helluva lot about people. Like the excellent Lew Griffin books, Cypress Grove is filled with all of these things in the wonderfully brief but telling style Sallis has brought to all of his poetry and fiction.

Here is just one little snippet from Val Bjorn to Turner as they sit on his front porch. She says:

"I once fell in love with a man because he had nothing but George Jones tapes in his apartment… Think about it. It’s a better reason than most others. I figured any man that devoted to Jones had to have something to him. Your lover’s going to lose jobs, hair and interest in you, get fat, sit on the couch farting. Those tapes will still be there, still be the same, old George pouring his heart into every note. Always sounds like he’s wrestling himself, squeezing notes out past some kind of emotional or physical obstruction. His voice stumbles, crawls, and soars, always somehow at the very edge of what a voice is, what a man can feel."

I can’t say the plot of Cypress Grove is very memorable, but James Sallis just keeps "pouring his heart" into every word.