The Killer Is Dying

The three intertwined stories here are strands in a meditation on life and death--in particular, as one might guess from the title, the latter. There is a detective story in that two detectives are looking for an attempted murderer; there is a mystery in that one of the characters is a killer-for-hire mysteriously robbed of his victim. But if you enter this book looking for either a detective story or a mystery novel, you will be disappointed. The characters are fully realized, but only in ways that illuminate their grief, their abandonment, and their attempts to find some kind of order or meaning in it all before it's too late. The mysticism in the idea of a young boy sharing the dreams of Christian, the killer of the title, might be show more off-putting to those who prefer their realism without the magical. And those themes of death and abandonment are a heavy load to bear. But each short chapter moves at a streamlined pace, and the whole is sustained by Sallis's spare, poetic writing. show less

This book sits at the junction between Sallis's love for noir fiction and his desire to write something much more complex. It isn't a busy junction, since few writers have the combination of talents that Sallis does.

A dying hitman tries to figure out what went wrong with his most recent hit--MINOR SPOILER--someone else beat him to it. Sallis weaves together the thoughts of the hitman, the two detectives who are trying to solve the murder, and a teenager living alone whose dreams are mysteriously tied to those of the hit man. I'm not quite sure what to make of that connection, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusion. Each of these threads is interesting, and Sallis's writing is always effective and frequently poetic. It all takes show more place in Phoenix, where Sallis now lives, and the atmosphere is well done.

While there is a plot here, this is not a typical crime novel by any means. It is really an impressionistic story where the individual parts are perhaps more important than the whole. It is a novel that, I suspect, would reveal even more nuances through a second reading. show less

The plot, the characters, or the writing - one part of a story is always strong enough to keep me reading. With James Sallis' novel, even though I bought the book for the blurb, I was carried along by the writing. He paints a picture with small details and the passing thoughts of the characters, so that even when I wasn't sure what was going on, I enjoyed every line.

A terminally ill hitman, his mark, two detectives investigating the hit when someone else steps in, and a young boy with a strange connection to the killer. That's the dramatis personae, and about as far as I got in understanding what was going on. But I don't care! I loved reading the descriptive vignettes and could perfectly envision each character and the worlds Sallis show more created for them. Definitely worth reading again. show less

A hit man, who is dying, is puzzled when another killer attacks his target before he can. He lingers to discover who the other killer is. Two policemen, one with a dying wife, investigate the attemped murder. A boy who has been abandoned by a mentally ill mother and indifferent father is living alone, using the internet to support himself. His sleep is disturbed by dreams that do not seem to belong to him. Three lives intercross in strange patterns approaching magical realism as the cliches of noir, amateur detection and police procedural are twisted into a work that is both neither and all of the above.

It's well-written. Nice prose. Perhaps an interesting concept...

but...

There's something missing here. There's not really a plot (even though there's a tiny mystery) and there's not really a protagonist you can relate to since we just pop in and out of their stories. It's not noir. It's not a detective novel.

Perhaps it was a spiritual novel? I'm not sure... there's no religion in it, but there's some sense of how each person's life can swirl out of control and only faith that things will be as they are can get them through?

Yeah. It was too deep for me. (And, if it wasn't meant to be deep, it was completely pointless 'cause there was no noticeable plotline.)

Christian is an old man who is hired to perform a killing, but finds that someone else has made an attempt on the life of his intended victim. Dale (really?) Sayles is a tired detective with a dying wife. Jimmie is a clever young boy whose parents have left him living alone. The three are connected in mysterious ways, including dreams. It appears that Jimmie is experiencing Christian's dreams, although I didn't pick up on this early enough to track it thoroughly. The book is all atmosphere, and very well written. An attentive re-read might uncover more of what Sallis is up to, but my pile is too big for that to happen soon.

The book is lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep
And books to read before I sleep.

I've taken a number of writing classes taught by Jim Sallis, the author of The Killer is Dying. This novel illustrates many of the ideas he teaches.

He frequently advises us to "trust the reader." By that, he means that a writer doesn't have to tell every little detail, readers are smart, they can fill in the gaps and many of them like to do just that. This sometimes makes his novels challenging to read. In The Killer is Dying, it's not immediately clear which character is the focus in each new chapter. Is it Christian, the hit man, Sayles the detective trying to find out who tried to kill Rankin--Christian had the job, but someone beat him to it--or Jimmie, the fourteen-year-old boy living on his own, making his living via the show more internet? So, as another reviewer suggested, this novel will have more to reveal with another reading, or even several. Don't pick up The Killer is Dying expecting an easy read, approach it as you would a classic, ready to give it full attention.

Jim also says that beginning writers or even some published writers, lesser writers, just want to tell the story, go from point a to point b, that they don't give much of what he calls "the surround." There's tons of atomsphere in this novel and his others. When Sayles is in the hospital checking on Rankin, talking to him, you're put into the hospital, you feel it, hear the sounds, smell the smells, see what's happening around him. There's a whole world around each character, not just his part of that world.

His novels, though nominally mysteries or crime novels, are really more about people trying to figure out life than about any plot.

Several LibraryThing reviewers note that the writing in this novel is often poetic. Jim considered himself a poet for much of the early part of his forty-plus years writing, sucessfully publishing poetry. The Killer is Dying, at 232 pages is one of Jim' longest novels--most of them weighing in at under 200 pages--not surprising given his background in poetry. He often tells students to look at their writing and to ask what work each word, each sentence, each paragraph does. If it doesn't do any work or even just doesn't do enough work, he recommends getting rid of it.

Sallis is a fine writer more interested in being the best writer he can be than in how much money he could make writing lesser novels. Interestingly, he's much more popular in Europe than in the United States. show less