Wed 16 Oct 2019
LOREN ESTLEMAN – Edsel. Detroit #4. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996.
My main complaint about this is that it isn’t an Amos Walker book. I’m sure Estleman is making entirely too much money with the Detroit series to go back to writing about old Amos, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing he would.
Connie Minor, the Greek newspaper columnist who was the narrator of the first Detroit book, Whiskey River, has fallen on hard times in the intervening years. The mid-fifties find him a newspaperman no more, reduced to working as an advertising copywriter. His fortunes take a turn (I didn’t say what kind) when one of Henry Ford II’s (“the Deuce”) executives offers him the job of selling America on the company’s proposed new car that will become known as the Edsel.
He takes the job, only to find his life still isn’t simple. He finds himself embroiled once again with gangsters and politicians, and trying to find out who ordered the attempted assassination of Walter Reuther.
I said in these pages a long time ago that whatever type fiction Estleman chose to write, one thing remained constant: he was a storyteller. He still is. Probably how interesting you find this story will depend on how interesting you find the fifties. I went from a sixth-grader to a firefighter, so I found it very interesting.
Estleman tells it with sot of a newsreel perspective and a caustic, semi-flip wit that goes down well. I wouldn’t say that any of the characters rather than Minor really came to life. Edsel is a quick and entertaining read, though perhaps not quite up to the first three in the Detroit saga. And nowhere close to as good as an Amos Walker.
October 16th, 2019 at 9:08 pm
There were three more books in Estleman’s Detroit series, the last one appearing in 1999. This corresponded in part to a gap of seven years between #10 of the Amos Walker books (Sweet Women Lie, 1990) and #11 (Never Street, 1997).
For those who don’t know who Amos Walker is, he’s a hardboiled PI living in Detroit whose book-length cases now number 28 in all, the most recent one being When Old Midnight Comes Along (2019).
I wonder if Barry’s assumption in the first paragraph of this review is correct. Did Estelman actually make more money writing the Detroit books than he did the Amos Walker books? I confess to never reading any of them, even though I was born and grew up in Michigan.
October 16th, 2019 at 10:59 pm
I actually like the Page Murdock books the best
October 16th, 2019 at 11:24 pm
Page Murdock being a US Deputy Marshal working out West in the mid 1880s, whose adventures Estelman has written up eight times, including most recently THE BOOK OF MURDOCK (2010).
I’ve not yet gotten around to reading any of them, but then again I’m still way behind on the Amos Walker books. (Based on this comment, it looks like I could use a couple of well-needed nudges.)
October 17th, 2019 at 2:09 pm
Cape Hell and now Wild Justice are last, I believe.
Pretty amazing career, plenty of series characters that he started and then usually came back to including Amos Walker, Macklin (hit man), Murdock, Valentino series (old motion pictures) and the Detroit series, plus a bunch of stand alones.
Supposedly used to type all his books on a typewriter, wonder if he still does.
October 17th, 2019 at 2:23 pm
Thanks, David. Some of my sources are out of date. I don’t want to be one of them!
The Page Murdock series —
The High Rocks (1979)
Stamping Ground (1980)
Murdock’s Law (1982)
The Stranglers (1984)
“The Angel of Santa Sofia” (1989)
City of Widows (1995)
White Desert (2000)
Port Hazard (2004)
The Book of Murdock (2010)
Cape Hell (2016)
Wild Justice (2018)
October 17th, 2019 at 6:09 pm
I probably found EDSEL a bit more interesting because it was my unfortunate father’s much hated middle name (the one he refused to use). Not the best of the Whiskey River series, but good as even minor Estelman is.