With thanks to Netgalley and Old castle books for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

Sarah Jane is a good all round read that I enjoyed.

Fans of fast-paced airport thrillers may be left adrift by the storytelling of James Sallis, but those with a penchant for character-centric tales full of exquisite prose, damaged people and musings on the human condition should add him to their reading list. Sallis is one of those ‘hidden gems’ of the crime genre, a master of noir who penned the story behind Ryan Gosling film Drive. His latest, SARAH JANE centres on the titular heroine, who becomes sheriff for a southwestern American town and investigates the disappearance of her predecessor.

A deep character study of a woman with a troubled life, this is a mesmerising novel about people and place. While searching for answers, Sarah Jane’s resume unfurls, from her humble chicken farm beginnings through a court-ordered Army stint, violent relationships and hardscrabble jobs, and deep personal tragedy. A story of grief and tenderness, of despair and hope. Sallis is like an elite boxer, knocking readers out with a barely seen uppercut rather than eye-catching haymakers. Seemingly effortless; efficient, brutal, and beautiful.

James Sallis has certainly provided a story told in a different way and also interesting way. Story about Sarah Janes written as a sort of biography telling her life story with a mix of current day and flashbacks interwoven into a thriller of sorts. Also reads as an anti war anti military story which makes you read between the lines at times. All in all quite a good read.

I was sent a copy of Sarah Jane by James Sallis to read and review by NetGalley.
I always take a while to get into the rhythm of James Sallis’ writing. This novel especially reads as though the protagonist is actually speaking to you, which I suppose she is through the writings in her journal. Once I got into the flow of the book and got her voice in my head, as it were, I enjoyed it. The author’s insight into small town America is amazing and rings true – at least to someone who has never experienced it! Another slight little masterpiece from a unique voice.

A character study really, rather than a mystery or a crime novel, though there are elements of both here. Sarah Jane has at last fallen on her feet, slotting into a role she seems ideally suited to with her blend of toughness and empathy, that of sheriff of a small town.

Sarah Jane’s narration is brilliantly done - snapshots from her colourful earlier life woven with vignettes of everyday life as a police officer in a small town, the omissions becoming clear and telling as the strands unravel. This is a terrific story, so unpredictable and had me questioning my instinctive responses all the way through.

Great writing, too, not a word too many or misplaced. A couple of examples:

‘Some guy from uptown arrived with a gaggle of fleshly echoes tiptoeing in his wake.’

‘By then I was living in Farr, the kind of place that has period gingerbread houses shouldered up against modern cookie-cutters, where hardware stores and gas-and-livebait shops cling to town’s edge, where you hear the whisper of old-country vowels in local speech. Legend had it that there’d once been twin towns but Nearr had up and moved away.’

Another author to add to my favourites list. Highly recommended.

All stories are ghost stories, about things lost, people, memories, home, passion, youth, about things struggling to be seen, to be accepted by the living...

James Sallis’s SARAH JANE is a masterpiece of spare yet poetic prose, a character study that zags when you expect it to zig, existential noir. Sarah Jane narrates her own story, her journey from troubled teen, through a tour of duty in the Middle East, a runaway bride, eventually, almost accidentally, becoming a small town sheriff. Along the way she makes observations about life and experiences, some sad, some funny, some enlightening.

Points on a line can never approach the experience itself.

For every gain you make, there’s slippage somewhere else. Sometimes the slippage is bigger than the gain.

Commentary on modern day America.

...from simpler times when, mistakenly or not, we understood the American dream to be collaborative rather than competitive.

But it’s what Sarah Jane doesn’t tell us, what Sallis alludes to but does not reveal, that makes this such a good novel. There is violence running through the story, behind all the events, and we are never sure who is responsible. One murder in particular, seemingly random, possibly not, makes you question every opinion you have developed about Sarah Jane. The ending is ambiguous and that, and the magnetic, hypnotic writing, begs a reread...

I thought Sarah Jane was excellent. James Sallis is a very fine writer and his spare style is quite riveting here.

It’s a hard book to describe. Narrated by the eponymous Sarah Jane Pullman, we get the story of how she ends up as a cop in a small town, a job which she didn’t expect to be in but which she’s very good at. The thing is, we don’t get quite the full story as the narrative unfolds and events in Sarah Jane’s past eventually begin to catch up with her – the faintest shadows at first, which begin to build to something more substantial. It’s a humane, thoughtful story which I found utterly gripping as Sallis builds a picture often through the recounting of small, relatively mundane events which are full of insight and compassion but where the sense of looming, growing threat is always present.

It’s beautifully written as Sallis creates his people and places almost like a brilliant artist can with a few lines in a charcoal sketch, with just a few, seemingly simple lines capturing the subject perfectly. It also has the immense merit of brevity at just over 200 pages; nothing is wasted and there’s absolutely no padding. I was completely gripped throughout and I can recommend this very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Oldcastle Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Stunning, moving tour de force ... I'd always heard about Sallis and this is first full novel of his I've read - we follow Sarah Jane's life story - from little girl, to her gritty childhood, looking out for herself, forced decision to go into the military - deaths by her hand and all around her; cooking to make a living, falling in with partners along the way, some good some bad - but encountering all along police men - attracted to their rough justice and the violence they deal with - when the sheriff goes missing, she's dragooned in - and the hunt for him rebounds on her by the end as tragedies pile up ... sometimes I did not know where things were headed but when I did 'get' it I'd see there was good reason - I wondered too if the voice was convincingly female - and kept thinking 'well, yes it is. - big ideas like empathy are given prominence- and what we see is tolerance and some real humour - absolutely great allusive and genuine dialogue. Sallis is a master!

NET GALLEY copy to review

A quick read for me because it was good. No rambling Shakespearean side roads here, prose to the pint and a heroine who is not a super hero. Read it and enjoy

Lyrical in a way reminiscent of James lee Burke's work. Flawed protagonists grappling with their own shortcomings in the face of cruel fate, and yet trying to rise above it all. I particularly loved that it was a female lead character rather than a cliched middle aged hard drinking man. The only downside, for me, was the number of flashbacks within flashbacks the narration was prone to, making it a bit confusing for the reader to know exactly what time period was being described.

Although this book had a story to tell, it didn’t tell that story in a way that appealed to me. I saw at the end that it was classed as
Literary Crime Fiction.
I half enjoyed it as I liked the characters, but the dialogue between them was bogged down (for me) with philosophising and analysis of almost every thought or action.
I don’t like leaving negative reviews, and maybe I’ll turn out to be in the minority but I found reading this book hard work.