Death Will Have Your Eyes (15 page)

1. How does David's life after the Cold War change when he is reactivated as a spy?
   
2. In what ways does identity factor into the book?
   
3. David and Gabrielle have a close relationship, how does Gabrielle help David adjust to life after being a spy?
   
4. What is the significance of David's profession after being an elite spy?
   
5. How does the short chapter structure create a sense of pace in
   Death Will Have Your Eyes
   ?
   
6. Who is Michael and is he who he claims to be?
   
7. David enjoys the cat and mouse game of spying, why does he seem so calm when being tracked?
   
8. What is Planchat's significance in the end? Why was David reactivated to find him?
   
9. Why is traveling the roads of America important to the story?
   
10. Can the reader depend on David as a narrator?
    

“Vivid and strange, with prose like blown glass,
Death Will Have Your Eyes
is somehow equal parts Borges and Trevanian's
Shibumi.
I was enthralled.”

—Jonathan Lethem

“This is a particularly fine post–Cold War espionage yarn cum road movie, whose best surprises are not to be found in the many twists along the way, but in the human touches dropped in by one of the most alive and alert writers of his generation.”

—Grant Stewart,
Crime Time
(UK)

“A breathtaking dismantling of the usual elements of the spy story, with sleeping agents reactivated for an endgame that takes place across the blacktops and motels of America.
Death
avoids obvious signposts and unfolds more like a laconic, existential road movie in search of the big whatsit. In a world of poetic yearning, lonely detour, and sporadic violence, peopled by seemingly random encounters—except there is no such thing in Sallis's book—this moves to a beat of its own. Sallis is a writer of real authority, making absolute what in less capable hands would be effete, his bleak landscape inhabited as much by Pablo Neruda and Cesare Pavese as by dead letter drops.”

—Chris Petit,
The Guardian
(UK)

“
Death Will Have Your Eyes
summarizes and transcends a whole sub-genre of forgettable spy thrillers.”

—Roz Kaveney,
Times Literary Supplement

“Enthralling.…Piles mystery upon mystery.…As profound as
Death Will Have Your Eyes
occasionally is, it's also a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun from a very gifted stylist.…James Sallis has a concise, lovely gift for evocative phrasing, and his wit is subtle and clever.…An enticing new work.”

—Rick Koster,
Dallas Morning News

“This is a book in which the word
should
is more dangerous than a handgun with the safety off. The espionage novel as existential road movie. Outstanding.”

—Gerald Houghton,
Edge
(UK)

“Sallis is a superb writer and this is his best novel yet!”

—Michael Moorcock

“A spy thriller with intellectual heft.…In this book Sallis has combined the usual formulas of noir spy stories with some militantly highbrow stuff. Oddly enough the combination works, mainly as a result of Sallis's dry humor and enigmatic musings.…I was hooked.”

—Harry Ritchie,
The Times
(UK)

“James Sallis—he's right up there, one of the best of the best.…Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy.”

—Ian Rankin

“Sallis is a wonderful writer, dark, lyrical, and compelling.”

—
Spectator
(UK)

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