Backwater

Praise for Backwater

A New York Times Editor’s Pick
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2026
An Air Mail Editor’s Pick

“Bishop’s worldly ruminations are salted with references to Saint-Exupéry, Plato and Nietzsche. Backwater, full of criminous and philosophical puzzles, is no run-of-the-mill police procedural. Sallis, who died in January, was no ordinary genre author. It’s a unique pleasure to read his final, rueful work.”
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

“One last noir gem … Backwater doesn’t waste a single word, and conveys more layers of emotion than most books double the length ever could.”
—Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review

“All of James Sallis’s work is first-rate. Backwater is his final book—he died at age 81 earlier this year—and is classic Sallis: a noir thriller that is as much about exploring human complexity as it is about murder. He has always found the ray of light in the dark world of his own imagination, and like any great novelist, he lets the reader feel a part of that world. Unlike many crime writers, he never uses three words when one will do, and thus rivals Hemingway in showing that less is more.”
—Air Mail

“A masterful, bittersweet swan song about a retired cop who’s called in for one final job … Brimming with life, this is a tender farewell from a towering talent.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Sallis’ valedictory novel is his most poignant and elliptical, and that’s saying a bit.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Reading James Sallis is like reading poetry.”
—Crime Fiction Review

“One of his best.”
—Library Comic

Praise for James Sallis

“Unlike those pretenders who play in dark alleys and think they’re tough, James Sallis writes from an authentic noir sensibility, a state of mind that hovers between amoral indifference and profound existential despair.”
—The New York Times

“The power of simplicity and the musical ring of truth as only Sallis can deliver it—as he has done bravely, consistently, for the last few decades.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Sallis’s treatment is minimalist, stylish, and all the more evocative for it. Essential noir existentialism.”
—The Guardian

“Sallis wrote like a man too who knew that the universe was strange, disappointing, briefly beautiful, and probably not going to explain itself. This is why his books feel less like stories you read and more like places you wander into, look around quietly, and leave slightly changed, wondering why your coffee tastes different afterward.”
—Adrian McKinty, author of The Island

“Then there’s James Sallis—he’s right up there, one of the best. It is quite possible that speaking of Jim Sallis in the same tone as Poe and Dostoevsky is not overblowing on my part.”
—Harlan Ellison

James Sallis (1944–2026) was the author of eighteen other novels, including Drive, which was made into a now-iconic film, as well as the short story collection Bright Segments.

He received the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the Deutsche Krimipreis, and the Brigada 21 in Spain. His biography of Chester Himes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Anthony, Nebula, Edgar, Shamus, and Gold Dagger Awards.

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