As Lew Griffin leaves a New Orleans music club with an older white woman he's just met, someone fires a shot and Lew goes down. When he comes fully to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night.

What happened? Who was the woman? Which of them was the target? Who was the sniper? There are too many pieces missing, too few facts, and a powerful need to know why a year has been stolen from his life.

Weaving Griffin's search for identity—one of the recurring themes in this magnificent series of novels—with a sensuous portrait of the people and places the define New Orleans, Sallis continues not only to unravel Griffin's past but to map his future…and our own.

Somewhere in the Crescent City—and in the white supremacist movement crawling through it—there's an answer to the questions left by the shot that echoed through the night. But to get it, Griffin is going to have to work with the only people offering help, people he knows he should avoid: allies if he can trust them, and worse trouble for him if he can't.

Bluebottle continues the mysterious journey begun in Sallis's The Long-Legged Fly and continues, too, to show the growth and mastery of one of America's finest crime fiction stylists.