Luke Salisbury Books


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Between these novels came three interconnected stories, Blue Eden. They deal with my obsessions of the 1970s: conspiracy, outlaws, the Kennedy assassination, J. Edgar Hoover. The stories take place in the Blue Eden diner on D Street in Washington DC, whose proprietor is Grover Jones, a black man born July 4, 1900, who has the challenge of being visited periodically by J. Edgar Hoover. Twenty-Seven Inches takes place during the hunting and killing of Dillinger in 1934; The Number of the Beast pits Grover against Ty Cobb who comes in the diner in 1947 threatening to shoot Jackie Robinson who has just integrated baseball (Hoover has taunted Cobb into it); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence happens on the last day of Hoover’s life in 1972 and is about the Kennedy assassination.

I used to think the Kennedy assassination was a ruling class Pentecost – invisible forces showed their face and the evening news spoke in tongues, if one only knew how to decipher this awful new language. I don’t know what happened in Dealey Plaza. I don’t believe one gunman, or one gunman without a support network, pulled it off – and at this point it doesn’t matter, meaning no revelation would affect the political system (If ever?). Dallas is now a mythical event that spawned a labyrinth of stories, truths and untruths, cover-up and the mechanics of cover-up.

Praise for Blue Eden

"It's all here in Luke Salisbury's latest book: from J. Edgar Hoover's favorite diner to Ty Cobb's favorite gun, with the Kennedy assassination in between. It's bigotry, baseball, and the murder mystery of the century. It's an author who brings a wonderful imagination and a wicked sense of irony to the panarama of 20th century history. A natural story teller, Salisbury would be good company over a cup of coffee at the Eden Diner."
— Martín Espada, author of Vivas to Those Who Have Failed and Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982/2002)

"Luke Salisbury has served up a three course meal of stories worth savoring in Blue Eden. He has captured life in a working man's diner—that just happens to have customers such as a despicable J. Edgar Hoover, his sycophantic sidekicks, and the infamous Ty Cobb. The attention to detail is so great that you can practically smell the pork chops as they come off the grill. By combining baseball, gangsters, the FBI, assassinations, and of course, diners, the author has delivered a real blue-plate special."
— Richard J. S. Gutman, author, American Diner: Then and Now

"A gem."
— Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine