Fri 17 Oct 2014
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Motor City Blue. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1980. Pinnacle, paperback, 1983. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1986.
Say welcome to a new private eye. Amos Walker hails from Detroit, and if nothing else, it insures he has no shortage of clients.
He’s hired in this one by an ex-gangster named Ben Morningstar to find his missing ward. The only clue is a black-and-white glossy of the type sold under the counter in even “those” kinds of bookstores. He’s also a witness to the kidnapping of an old “friend,” a former company commander back in the days of the Vietnam affair. In broad daylight, on Woodward Avenue. I believe it.
There’s more. The Black Legion — a northern offshoot of the Klan — may be involved in the death of a militant young black labor leader. It’s quite a case. Nothing wholly original, mind you, and if coincidence bothers you, stay away. All the same, it’s written with a definite sense of style and a contagious feeling for the rhythms of life in the inner city.
If you’re from out of town, you might even get the feeling that the grand old city of Detroit is nothing but one gigantic slum, ready and ripe for redevelopment. Well, I’ve been there, and do you know — not meaning to malign one of my favorite cities at all — I can tell you this: you’d not really be so very far from wrong.
[UPDATE] 10-17-14. There are (or will be) 24 novels in Estleman’s Amos Walker series, with #24 being published in December: You Know Who Killed Me. There are also two collections of Amos Walker short stories (with possible overlapping). I’ve read only a third of the novels, a sign of serious neglect on my part.
October 18th, 2014 at 8:47 pm
At some point Walker’s world became too downbeat for me, but I didn’t stop reading them for any failure of Estleman as a writer. It was just as Detroit became a darker place Walker changed with it, but I did still read some of Estleman’s historical mysteries about Detroit and enjoy them.
Whatever else Walker and Estleman were to Detroit what Chandler and Marlowe were to LA and that’s no small accomplishment.
October 18th, 2014 at 9:43 pm
I took a look and the “third” of the novels I’m quoting myself as having read, they all came from the first half of the series. Even so, I understand what you’re saying about the books becoming darker.
For me, though, I find it very difficult to read all of an author’s output. Twenty-four books is a long time to stay with an author, no matter how good he is. There’s always somebody new who comes along and takes your attention away.
I wish I could promise that I’ll follow through on this, but the Amos Walker series is one I’d like to get back to.
October 19th, 2014 at 7:17 am
Estleman himself wrote early in the series that five or six books should be the maximum length for a series, as authors and readers lose interest. I too have read the earlier ones, but fallen off the wagon lately. I also used to read just about every PI novel that came out, now only a vary occasional one.
His westerns, especially the Page Murdock books, I thought were well done.
October 19th, 2014 at 5:19 pm
In the next to last sentence the word should be spelled “very” not “vary”
October 19th, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Was actually hoping I spelled “occasional” the correct way, missed the easy one
October 20th, 2014 at 5:33 pm
Steve
I think private eye series may be the most difficult for me to stay with over the long haul. I can think of so many series I dropped somewhere between the fifth and seventh book, often acquiring a few I never read.
That said I never tired of Shell Scott, Michael Shayne, Chester Drum, Nameless, and a few other long running series. I think it is not only because they were good writers, but because they seemed to find a variety that too many other series never did. Walker to some extent became too predictable for me. Not formula, Estleman is too good for that, but perhaps a too consistently downbeat voice, because the other thing those writers I mentioned have in common is they are not downbeat writers.
October 20th, 2014 at 5:42 pm
I think you’ve caught the essence of why I faded away from the Walker series, without my even thinking about it.