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Loren D. Estleman has long been the best modern practitioner in the genre that Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler and Ross D. MacDonald created and he's not bashful about making his debt to the classics clear. It's entirely fitting then that this early Shamus Award winning entry in the great Amos Walker series includes homages to Lew Archer -- in the person of a young man who's been missing for nineteen years when our hero is hired to find him -- to The Maltese Falcon -- in the form of the Macguffin that drives the back half of the book -- and Farewell, My Lovely -- in a scene where Amos is pumped full of drugs by the bad guys. Even better, in this book Mr. Estleman takes a direct shot at Robert B. Parker and Spenser, who've done so much to ruin the private eye novel:
There was nothing on television and I sat up for a while smoking and trying to read a paperback mystery I'd picked up in a drugstore while tailing someone. It was about a private eye back East who wore expensive running shoes with everything and squawked so much about the things he wouldn't do that you had to wonder what people hired him for in the first place. His partner was a professional killer and if there was a mystery to it all I couldn't find it and gave up. To hell with P.I.'s with codes they have to keep hauling out and looking at like pocket watches and to hell with cool fresh voices in women's mouths.
Amen, brother.


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (A+)


Websites:

See also:

Loren Estleman (2 books reviewed)
Private Eyes
Loren Estleman Links:

    -AUTHOR SITE: Loren Estleman
    -Amos Walker: Created by Loren D. Estleman (Thrilling Detective)
    -ESSAY: HOW FILM NOIR WILL FOREVER CHANGE YOUR WORLDVIEW: Decades later, Loren D. Estleman is still under the spell of that essential art form: the film noir. (LOREN D. ESTLEMAN, 7/28/20, CrimeReads)
    -INTERVIEW: Golden Blonde: PW Talks with Loren D. Estleman (Mary Ann Tennenhouse, 4/21/2003, Publishers' Weekly)
    -INTERVIEW: Loren Estleman: Matchless portraits of conflicts and frontiers (James Sallis, The Boston Globe: A Reading Life)
    -INTERVIEW: Think Fast, Mr. Motown: an interview with Loren Estleman (J Kingston Pierce, January Magazine)
    -INTERVIEW: Loren Estleman Interview (Mystery One Bookstore, October 12, 2001)
    -REVIEW: of The Witchfinder by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Sugartown by Loren D. Estleman (Newgate Callendar, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Every Brilliant Eye by Loren D. Estleman (Newgate Callendar, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Downriver by Loren D. Estleman (Newgate Callendar, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Silent Thunder by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Sweet Women Lie by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Never Street By Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Hours of the Virgin by Loren D. Estleman (Ted Fitzgerald, The Drood Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Hours of the Virgin (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of A Smile on the Face of the Tiger by Loren D. Estleman (Ted Fitzgerald, The Drood Review)
    -REVIEW: of Sinister Heights by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Sinister Heights (Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter)
    -REVIEW: of Poison Blonde by Loren D. Estleman (Andi Shechter, Reviewing the Evidence)
    -REVIEW: of Poison Blonde (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Retro by Loren D. Estleman (Lev Raphael, Morning Edition: NPR)
    -REVIEW: of Retro (Andi Shechter, Reviewing the Evidence)
    -REVIEW: of Retro (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Peeper by Loren D. Estleman (GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Whiskey River by Loren D. Estleman (Walter Walker, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of King of the Corner by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Edsel by Loren D. Estleman (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Something Borrowed, Something Black by Loren D. Estleman (Thea Davis, The Mystery Reader)
    -REVIEW: of Stress by Loren D. Estleman (JP, Mystery Guide)
    -REVIEW: of Stress (Marilyn Stasio, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Billy Gashade by Loren D. Estleman (Dennis J. Carroll, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Undertaker's Wife by Loren D. Estleman (Dennis Lythgoe, Deseret Morning News) -AWARDS: The Shamus Awards: Bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of America
-BEST P.I. HARDCOVER: Sugartown by Loren D. Estleman
-BEST P.I. SHORT STORY: The Crooked Way by Loren D. Estleman
-BEST P.I. SHORT STORY: "Lady on Ice" by Loren D. Estleman


AMOS WALKER SERIES: Motor City Blue (1980)
Angel Eyes (1981)
The Midnight Man (1982)
The Glass Highway (1983)
Sugartown (1984)
Every Brilliant Eye (1986)
Lady Yesterday (1987)
Downriver (1988)
Silent Thunder (1989)
Sweet Women Lie (1990)
Never Street (1997)
The Witch Finder (1998)
The Hours of the Virgin (1999)
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (2000)
Sinister Heights (2002)
Poison Blonde (2003)
Retro (2004)
Nicotine Kiss (2006)


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