Loren D Estleman

When a client disappears before she can give him his assignment, Detroit PI Amos Walker must hunt down a woman he barely knows After a tour in Vietnam and several years working the streets of Detroit as a private investigator, Amos Walker has seen a lot. But he's never encountered anything quite like his newest assignment. Ann Maringer, an aging stripper hard at work at one of the city's many low-grade joints, hires him to find a missing person: herself....

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...

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 young black cop goes head-to-head with Detroit's elite undercover squad when one of its officers is accused of a racially fraught murder For Paul Kubicek and the city of Detroit, 1972 ends in a haze of blood. A police officer in need of extra work, Kubicek spends New Year's Eve moonlighting as a security guard at an upscale Grosse Pointe party. Just before midnight, in the sea of white faces, he sees three black men, a shotgun, and a pistol. Shooting...

Masquerading as a soldier, a serial killer savages wartime Detroit; it's up to one detective and his ragtag team to stop him As the United States enters World War II, Detroit converts its factories to an "arsenal of democracy," fueling the American war machine. The city's sons leave to join the fight, but one man does not follow. Declared too unstable for combat, he steals an Air Force corporal's uniform. Using the uniform to inspire trust, he talks...

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 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.

The four-time Shamus Award—winning author takes his readers behind-the-scenes of his long running detective series. In 1980, readers first encountered hard-boiled private detective Amos Walker as he searches for an ex-mobster's missing daughter in Motor City Blue. Many mysteries and decades later, the investigator is still scuffling with bad guys on the streets of Detroit. But when and where did award-winning author Loren D. Estleman conceive...

As featured in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places represents forty years of suspense writing in the short form. Previously published in a host of magazines and anthologies, with a new Preface and introductions to the stories written especially for this collection, these eighteen tales feature gangsters, private eyes, psychotic killers, hitmen, feuding families, prostitutes, prizefighters,...

During the Great Depression, a ruthless killer breaks out of prison to reclaim his status as Public Enemy Number One in this chilling, action-packed novel   Before Dillinger, before Bonnie and Clyde, there was Virgil Ballard, the most ruthless killer the United States has ever seen.   Ballard gets his start in the early 1920s, hijacking liquor trucks and selling the bootlegged hooch. He has a youthful face and the eyes of a killer, and it isn't...