Showing results by author "Loren Estleman" in All Categories

Jay has never forgotten the photo once sent to him of his young fiancée - naked in the arms of another man. Now on his deathbed and convinced the photo was a fake, the hunt is on for a modern-day witchfinder. And Amos Walker is the man for the job.

Countless tragedies occurred during the 1967 Detroit riots, and one of them belonged to Richard DeVries. A 22-year-old black man about to play for the Pistons, he was spotted tossing a Molotov cocktail at an abandoned building, arrested on the spot, and then charged with robbing an armored car. 20 years later he’s free, and the first man he calls on is Amos Walker. With 20 years of savings he buys a month of Walker’s time, asking for help finding the men who robbed the armored car. DeVries has already paid for stealing that $200,000, and now it’s time to collect it.

What could be more innocent than watching old movies? For Neil Catalin, a wealthy man with a happy home, old-fashioned pictures were a hobby that became an obsession. But he wasn’t watching The Wizard of Oz. Crime movies were his passion, the sort where life is cheap and death is free, and Catalin sank himself into them as an escape from the stresses of suburbia. Now he has disappeared, and his wife believes the clue may be in his collection of gruesome classics.

In You Know Who Killed Me, by multiple award-winning author Loren D. Estleman, Amos Walker is at low ebb. Just released from a rehab clinic, the Detroit private detective has to marshal his energies to help solve a murder in Iroquois Heights, his least favorite town. The area is flooded with billboards rented by the widow of Donald Gates, an ordinary suburbanite found shot to death in his basement on New Year's Eve: "You know who killed me!"

In Estleman's latest novel, Amos Walker is back on the streets of Detroit as he investigates the mysterious death of an aging pulp fiction writer.

Barry Stackpole was tough once. Amos Walker met him in a Cambodian shell crater when Walker was serving his country and Stackpole was on the payroll of the Detroit News, and they formed the kind of bond that war often creates. At war’s end, they returned to the Motor City, where Stackpole took to reporting crimes and Walker to solving them. A violent run-in with a big time mobster left Stackpole a leg and two fingers short, and he became an alcoholic. He has made several attempts to get his life straight since, but never quite managed.

Everyone knows the Frankenstein monster was played by Boris Karloff. But before Karloff’s memorable portrayal, another famous 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of the monster. The screen test footage was lost for decades, until Valentino, the never-say-die film archivist, gets a hot tip about the whereabouts of the incriminating (for really bad, heavily accented acting) footage. But it comes with a price far greater than the money he’ll have to pay.

Johns Davis has just left the Alamo when he feels the garrote wrap around his neck. The bookie slams his foot on the gas, sending the car into oncoming traffic. It bounces off a van, hops the curb, and crashes into a hotel, knocking Davis unconscious and breaking the neck of his would-be assassin. Davis can breathe again, but just for a moment. When the mob wants you dead, they'll always send another killer.

The Reverend Thomas Aquinas Sunsmith is halfway through his sermon when killers open fire. He is preaching against the evils of gambling, which a cartel of mobsters is trying to legalize in Detroit. The hail of gunfire misses the reverend, but a choir member is cut down—the first victim in the battle for the soul of the Motor City. The Detroit mob has erupted into civil war, and professional killer Peter Macklin is caught in the middle. A former mob employee, he has since tried to stay away from the savagery of organized crime, but now they're offering him a job too tempting to refuse.

Feast on this delectable collection of "whodunits" from some of the mystery world's most diabolical chefs.

1946. Fresh from the War in Europe, hack writer Jacob Heppleman discovers a changed world back home. The pulp magazines he used to write for are dying, replaced by a revolutionary new publishing racket: paperback novels, offering cheap excitement for the common man and woman. Although scorned by the critics, the tawdry drugstore novels sell like hotcakes—or so Jacob is assured by the enterprising head of Blue Devil Books, a pioneer in paperback publishing, known for its two-fisted heroes and underclad cover girls.