With his usual knife-sharp prose in cutting form, Loren D. Estleman proves that he can carve a short story as cleanly as the full-length Amos Walker detective novels. Detroit's favorite private investigator, Amos Walker, barrels through this collection of five short stories by Shamus Award winner Loren D. Estleman. General Murders upholds Estleman's reputation as a master of the short story. Both card-carrying fans of Amos Walker and those who are...

Valentino wants to keep The Oracle, his beloved run-down movie palace, from being condemned before it even reopens, but murder keeps intruding into his otherwise quiet life. At a gala party held in memory of screen legend Greta Garbo, he's having fun until the host, a hotshot developer named Matthew Rankin, tells Valentino about a certain letter from Garbo to his late wife. She and Garbo had been...close. Such a letter is of great interest to a film...

An ex-con hires Detroit PI Amos Walker to find the people who put him behind bars Countless tragedies occurred in the three days of the 1967 Detroit riots, and one of them belonged to Richard DeVries. A twenty-two-year-old black man about to get his chance to play for the Pistons, he was spotted tossing a Molotov cocktail at an abandoned building and arrested on the spot. The police added armed robbery to the arson charge, and sent DeVries up the...

A chance encounter with an old flame sends Detroit PI Amos Walker on a hunt for her long-lost father Iris was a great beauty when Amos Walker first saw her-a Jamaican goddess striding stark naked through an unworthy whorehouse. When he bumps into her at a high-class steakhouse just outside of Detroit, she still looks good. She's come back from the Caribbean to seek out her father. Raised by her mother, Iris grew up thinking the man was dead, but has...

Paperback Jack is a brand new historical thriller from Grand Master Loren D. Estleman: lurid paperback covers promised sex and danger, but what went on behind the scenes was nearly as spicy as the adventures between the covers. 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...

Hired to promote the new American dream car, a former reporter finds himself mired in a deadly conspiracy against a union boss and Ford Motors itself It's only been two decades since Connie Minor was on top, but it feels like centuries. Once a journalist, Minor spent Prohibition with his finger on gangland's pulse, a confidant of every rumrunner, boss, and triggerman in Detroit. But as the gangsters fell, Minor went with them, replaced by a generation...

A faded film star asks Detroit PI Amos Walker to get her out of a relationship with a deadly mobster When Amos Walker was a teen, he had a poster of Gail Hope on his wall. A 60s bombshell in the beach-blanket tradition, she has fallen hard since her glory days as one of the dying studio system's final starlets. But when she calls on Amos Walker she remains as lovely as ever: an elegant beauty with a $750,000 problem.   Since her career evaporated,...

An aged mobster's adopted daughter disappears, and Detroit PI Amos Walker is the only man tough enough to seek her out It has been years since Ben Morningstar retired. The feared mobster, now decades past his prime, left his deadly business behind and retired to Phoenix. His only concern now is Maria, daughter of a long-ago murdered friend, whom Morningstar has raised as his own. When she disappears, the old man goes into action once more.   When...

In the tense summer before Detroit's 1967 race riots, a former cop faces off against some of the city's most dangerous forces Rage simmers beneath the tranquil surface of 1960s Detroit. As the auto industry enjoys its last moments of prosperity, widespread discrimination infuriates the city's black middle class. One of the most destructive riots of the twentieth century is around the corner, and Rick Amery is going to be right in the middle.   A...

In the throes of Prohibition-era Detroit, one reporter follows the gripping and violent life of a man who helped keep the booze flowing Like nowhere else in America, Detroit flourished during Prohibition. The constant flow of liquor from across the Canadian border made Lake Erie a war zone, and lined the pockets of the men who ran the Purple Gang, the Unione Siciliana, and the Little Jewish Navy. As the mob bosses got rich, they mingled with the upper...