Loren D. Estleman books

Bloody Season (1999)

From the three-time Golden Spur Award winner--the classic novel about Tombstone, Arizona... "Pistol-hot...rawhide tough."--Kirkus Reviews "Gritty and unwashed realism...a brutal showdown."--Elmer Kelton "High drama...so real you can smell the horses."--Elmore Leonard "Raw, realistic, myth exp...

Jitterbug (1999)

It is Detroit during World War II, and the U.S. is trying to out-manufacture the Germans and Japanese. Workers have been brought in to replace the men fighting in the war. For the first time Southern whites and blacks are working together. But with the black market, rationing, and the Mafia; Detr...

The Witchfinder (1999)

There are so many one-liners in this book you could squash a pack mule under their combined weight. The main character, Amos Walker, is a heavyweight prose puncher and a verbal jujitsu master. He says the kind of things you write down on 3 x 5 cards and study before parties. Jab and punch phrases...

Motor City Blue (1986)

A little bit too much.I have now read two Amos Walker books, this one and a collection of short stories, and I have yet to make up my mind about whether I truely like this character/writer or not.I like the tough streets of Detroit stuff and I think the setting, the industrial decay of the upper ...

The Midnight Man (2000)

"Look for us when the moon is new. Look for us, but keep your distance. We're the Midnight Men, and the prey we're stalking could be you." In the private eye business, mistakes can be fatal. Just ask Amos Walker. First, he pulls his gun on a man he thought was a member of a group of potential t...

Every Brilliant Eye (2001)

To paraphrase author John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee series); Estleman's Amos Walker is "one of the few characters who would be comfortable communing with his Ft. Lauderdale knight in shining armor". High praise indeed from one of the "Masters" of the genre.With the recent demise of most of my fa...

Sugartown (2001)

Loren D. Estleman is a prolific writer and if you read mysteries, chances are you've read one of his before. I had, but it was a long time ago. When this one came up on the Kindle daily sale, I thought it was time to refresh my memory of this writer.SUGARTOWN is good one to start with. It is ...

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion (2006)

Johnny Vermillion’s theater troupe brings masterpieces to the Wild West. The four actors are versatile enough to wear many costumes and play many roles. A few props, a little makeup, a costume and--voilà--applause on the rugged frontier. Johnny also arranges a special attraction for each town. W...

Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula (1979)

Con fanfiction crossover si intende quella fanfiction, cioè una storia creata da un fan, che unisce due o più serie.Ecco quello che mi è sembrato questo libro: una fanfiction, scritta da un grande fan di Holmes, in cui fa scontrare il detective con Dracula.Le mie aspettative per questo libro eran...

The Hours of the Virgin (2015)

Walker, who is neither, follows the 500-year-old trail of a stolen illuminated manuscript across the bleak landscape of a dead city, coming face to face with a trinity as unholy as anything in Revelations: a crippled millionaire pornographer, a mystery woman with mismatched eyes, and the darkest ...

American Detective (2007)

Roses Are Dead (1987)

In the stunning sequel to Kill Zone, there's a contract on Detroit hit man Peter Macklin. He has one hope--that he's better than the killers on his trail--and one prayer--that his son isn't one of them.

Whiskey River (1991)

This book and the six others in the series take place in Detroit, Michigan. I grew up near Detroit so that is the draw for me. I enjoy reading books that happen in familiar territory. Each book covers one decade from the 1930s to the 1990s. In this first book the protagonist, a newspaper journali...

Poison Blonde (2004)

Amos Walker is an entertaining character. His dialogue, as a private detective, makes me want to place him somewhere between Mike Hammer and Groucho Marx. He’s a tough guy whose asides are made to entertain himself as well as his audience. In this case he finds that he has been hired by a famo...

Sudden Country (1991)

This was a cracker-jack of a western novel. The author was very familiar with the actual history of the Old West and wrote in a wonderful archaic style -much like True Grit. In fact, I would have given this five stars if I hadn't recognized (from the first chapter) that this story was ripped of...

Silent Thunder (1989)

The tabloids were full of it. Constance Thayer, after a night of clubbing, drinks, and drugs, had taken an automatic pistol from the collection of her industrialist husband Doyle Thayer Jr. and emptied it into his back, as he lay naked and unconscious in their Iroquois Heights home. The news of C...

Retro (2005)

White Desert (2001)

Port Hazard (2004)

Hired killers, sent one by one to Montana Territory after Page Murdock. Murdock doesn't know why someone wants him out of the way, but he knows where they're coming from.Thus begins Murdock's descent into a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than even he has ever seen---San Francisco's Ba...

Murdock's Law (1987)

The big ranchers wanted a gunslinger marshal. The small ranchers had a hired gun. Even Murdock's deputies couldn't be trusted. But the badge on Murdock's chest meant law, and he'd enforce it the best way he knew . . . with a gun.

Never Street (1998)

Neil Catalin, a video entrepreneur, had gone missing after watching Pitfall, a Dick Powell potboiler that featured a smoldering beauty, a hormone-driven private eye, and a murderously jealous lover. For detective Amos Walker, the truth behind Neil Catalin's disappearance is going to be found some...

Lady Yesterday (2002)

Not even a drug war can deter private eye Amos Walker in his quest for the father of an old romance, a legendary trombonist. The trail leads him and the lost man's daughter, Iris, through Detroit's smoky jazz clubs into dens of hard crime, where they will be lucky to escape with their lives.

Sweet Women Lie (1991)

Sweet! Women lie?Estleman and his Detroit detective Amos Walker is my favorite hard-boiler of all time. He's almost always dead-on laconic, and the settings in dirty and decaying Detroit are perfect for the less-said-the-better writing style that lets Estleman put over a detailed mystery in 180...

Sinister Heights (2002)

You will enjoy this book a lot more if you are familiar with the Detroit area. I lived in that area for the first thirty years of my life so I qualify in being familiar. This book is filled with street names that I know. Sinister Heights was published in 2002 when Detroit was on the verge of losi...

Kill Zone (1991)

I ran across this series starring Peter Macklin while looking at an Estleman bibliography. Such a multi-faceted/talented author who manages to write excellent, well-written stories in multiple genres: detective, western, and thriller.Apparently this was the first in a series of Macklin novels. Wh...

City of Widows (1995)

Page Murdock has been sent to the tough New Mexico of 1881 to track down a man and bring him to justice. But more than a trail of revenge, Murdock finds himself on a desperate odyssey. For in the Southwest a friend can turn out to be one's cruelest enemy, an enemy one's finest friend. And the wom...

The Wolfer (1999)

Legendary wolfer Asa North is as ferocious and ruthless as the wolves he hunts. But in his latest mission, he takes on a wolf named Black Jack -- and he'll be lucky to get out alive...

Thunder City (2001)

Thunder City presents Detroit in the process of becoming the Motor City. Harlan Crownover, scion of a great family of carriage makers, battles with his father to invest in a company run by Henry Ford, who has failed twice before in the automobile business. Desperate for funds, Harlan turns to Big...

A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (2002)

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

Stress (1997)

Follows the experiences of Charlie Battle, an African American rookie policeman, who joins an elite undercover squad known for its shoot-first philosophy and its anti-Black prejudice.

Red Highway (1994)

Sentenced to life in prison for murder and armed robbery, Virgil Ballard breaks out to resume his status in the West as Public Enemy Number One.

Motown (1991)

The setting, Detroit, Michigan, is a plus for me as I grew up in that area. I like the familiar landmarks and the involvement of the auto industry. Motown happens in the sixties when I was in high school and college. Tiger baseball is a part of the Detroit scene that decorates the set, with the n...

Peeper (1991)

I previously have read Loren D. Estleman's Sherlock Holmes work and was intrigued when I found what appeared to be a noir (hardboiled?) story.I approached it thinking I was reading something like Sam Spade style noir but it soon became apparent that it would be more like Jack Nicholson in "Chinat...

Cape Hell

Luckily for me, this one came without an arm. I pried the Colt loose, picked the hand and wrist up by the fingers, and pitched it out the window to rejoin its master in whatever afterlife awaited him. The fingers were warm and a little moist. They opened as it fell, like a crumple of paper losing...

The Book of Murdock (2011)

There were any number of reasons why the manservant of a busy ranch owner would have business with a stagecoach line, but I was satisfied that he’d just posted a letter to Denver on Freemason’s behalf to test Brother Bernard’s story. It was Monday and a coach stood ready before the door. That mea...

Frames

Estleman Forge (2007) Rating: *** Tags: Suspense Enter Valentino, a mild-mannered UCLA film archivist. In the surreal world of Hollywood filmdom, truth is often stranger than celluloid fiction. When Valentino buys a decrepit movie palace and uncovers a skeleton in the secret Prohibition basement,...

Book Club

It was right there in the town of Good Advice, and it belonged to Avery Sharecross’ bookshop. Sharecross had established it, years before many of the residents were born, in a three-hundred-year-old mission that had been by turns a community theater, a Salvation Army shelter, a home for armadillo...

Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales

Every seat was taken, and the dark oaken rafters hewn and fit in place by the ancestors of a good share of those present resounded with a steady hum of conversation while the broad pine planks that made up the floor creaked beneath the tread of many feet.     Up in front, his ...

Edsel

Battle said. “Oh, I wrestled some at Mumford, that’s where I picked up the moves. Coach told me I’d’ve been All-State if they let me on the mat with white kids. I trained to box. Joe Louis, he my main man. Then I got squashed flat by some kid from Chicago in my first round at Golden Gloves.” The ...

Ragtime Cowboys

Hammett, his foot still smarting from the wrenched bandage, sat this time at the desk. The others stood. Charmian had sent the disapproving Eliza Shepard to town on an overnight errand. “I still think we should abandon our course,” Charmian said, “but Mr. Siringo has agreed to abide by your decis...

You Know Who Killed Me

In other words, a typical night in the romantic life of the private eye; I’d been tanked, threatened, schmoozed, followed, and cornered into committing a federal crime—one, at least. What George Andrew Gesner chose to make of it in a civil case concerning pain and suffering was up to him and a sl...

Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

I acquired it from a foreman at Dodge Main who’d bought it for a starter home in 1940 and moved out thirty years later into his daughter’s house after she caught him trying to replace a spent fuse with a shotgun shell. After twenty-five years I don’t guess it’s a starter for me either. It’s a pla...

Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss

It was a feral sound; in imperial Russia it would have been a pack of wolves clearing their throats for a good howl, followed by an old-fashioned feeding frenzy. I folded the sheet of bills into a square, then a rectangle, and stuck it in my pocket. It felt like the world’s biggest banknote. I pu...

The High Rocks (2011)

Rocking Wolf spoke flatly and seemingly without emotion, but the emotion was there, in his words. They dripped cold fury. The sun had risen dazzlingly over twelve inches of fresh snow, shining through the spots where the wind had slashed the cloud cover into fibrous shreds and turning the uninter...

The Perils of Sherlock Holmes

said I, gripping my stick in the defensive position familiar to my service in India and Afghanistan. “Here is a proper cut-throat.” Sherlock Holmes and I were returning from a constitutional which I as his physician had prescribed. For a fortnight, my friend and fellow-lodger had not ventured out...

Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive!

  14 THE GROTTO WASN’T as seedy as Valentino had expected. Located directly on San Diego Bay with a dock in back where boaters could put in to replenish their stock of refreshments, it had a faux stone façade, a bar and restaurant on the first level, a second story reserved (according to a sign) ...

Alone

Estleman   No copyright  2013 by MadMaxAU eBooks         **           There is only one Garbo.     —Greta Garbo             **           News item, December 11, 2005:   GARBO’S LETTERS MISSING   Stockholm, Sweden—Two letters and two postcards written by Swedish screen legend G...

Stamping Ground (1980)

This was the same structure we had seen being repaired earlier by the boy who turned out to be Jac’s son Lucien. Sleeping on buffalo robes didn’t come easy after an extended period of city life, but I’d got along on worse and so had Hudspeth. We drifted off in short order—me from exhaustion after...

Burning Midnight

His sister crossed her arms. “He’s exhausted and filthy. Come back tomorrow when he’s rested.” I wanted him too tired to tell any more lies, but I came up with a reason that wouldn’t get me thrown out of the house. “It’s in his best interest to talk to me before he talks to the police. They won’t...

The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes

“The Surgeon’s Kit,” excerpted from A Study in Terror, pays fitting tribute to the deductive acrobatics and clever Holmes-Watson banter of the originals. The novel was adapted from the 1965 film of the same title, but for those familiar only with the movie, Queen provides a surprise: an alternati...

Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (2011)

I don’t go there often. I spend less on a bottle of red wine than the place charges for a glass of decent scotch. That day I went. Ed Warburton had done me a favor as commander of the eleventh precinct when he could just as well have jailed me as a material witness, and had a round bought in his ...

American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel (2007)

Alderdyce said. “Twice.” “I came straight here with it,” I said. “Well, I stopped for lunch. I didn’t have much breakfast.” “You never do. You like to hit the ground running and screw me over early. I’m talking about before. Charlotte Sing’s name kind of never came up.” “I was sparing you extrane...

Angel Eyes

He stood chewing gum and watching me through the blank lenses of his dark glasses as I pulled out. I was making myself very popular with the authorities today. No one was waiting to take advantage of my considerable services as I walked through the shallow outer room to my office and unlocked the...

Downriver

I might have been in a cathedral on Martin Luther’s birthday. When I slotted a quarter into the telephone, the rattle echoed. “Yes.” How Raf got so much Arabic intonation into so short a word was a mystery. I said, “Walker, the Commodore included this number in some stuff he sent me today. Can yo...

The Glass Highway

First, GM had dangled the carrot of a new Cadillac plant under the mayor’s nose, then the black knight of Eminent Domain had charged in with token payments for the dreams of lifetimes, and finally those stubborn residents who had refused to leave were burned and trashed out by vandals, none of wh...

Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels

Eugenia Pappas leaned back from her blanched pine desk, looking at the printout. Barry had accompanied me to the morning room, the features of which seemed to interest him more than the view of Anchor Bay, glittering under the sun breaking through the clouds. Bright-colored sails had sprung up li...

The Sundown Speech

The trees were as green and as fat as artichokes, so the first clue I was getting close came when I entered a sharp curve and a diamond-shaped sign leapt out of the bushes reading HIDDEN DRIVEWAY. The two-lane blacktop is a crazy serpentine scenic highway following the bank of a tributary of Lake...

The Long High Noon

I’m back; did you forget me? No reason you shouldn’t. My life would make a diverting book, but not as fast reading as Mr. Locke’s or Mr. Farmer’s. I wouldn’t be its hero, only its narrator. I’m the fellow who brought this whole affair to your attention, back when the West wasn’t anyone’s never-mi...

Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro

Rosecranz was older than sixty and younger than a hundred, and had evaded Cossacks and an NKVD hit squad in order to come to America, if he hadn’t gotten all his stories out of the adventure pulps he used to teach himself English. I hoped he hadn’t, because without them he was just a worn pair of...

The Murdock's Law (2011)

Yardlinger sneered. He and Randy Cross were standing on the boardwalk on either side of the hotel entrance, holding their shotguns. “You go on to the jail and wait for Shedwell to turn himself in?” “I’ll explain later. Get the Major.” I turned and stepped back inside, leaving them there. The cler...

King of the Corner

On Monday Doc drove him in the Cadillac to a house in Hazel Park, where a woman who didn’t want her husband to know what she was up to arranged bail for her sister, who had been taken into police custody when her fingerprints showed up in the apartment of a young man being held for the armed robb...