The accomplished Loren D Estleman has published a wide variety of novels but none as popular as his series starring Amos Walker, Detroit-based Private Investigator. Elmore Leonard is quoted saying "Estleman turns Amos Walker loose in a plot and it’s pure private eye all the way. No one does it better." In
American Detective, the 19th in the series and published in 2007, Walker takes on the case of a rash, petulant daughter of a faded baseball star and it quickly moves from petty theft to murder to international crime.
Publisher's blurb: Ex-Detroit Tigers pitcher Darius Fuller wants Amos Walker to break off his daughter's engagement to Hilary Bairn, a man he believes is after her two million dollar trust fund. But then Fuller's daughter is found dead in Bairn's apartment, and what seems like a simple case of greed and murder soon uncovers a twisted web of corruption. Walker discovers that Bairn had made many enemies before he disappeared, and continuing his investigation puts Walker on the wrong side of all of them. Soon Walker find himself on the run from crooked cops and vile gangsters, and at every turn farther from the truth than when he started ...
There is lots of he-man action and wry first person commentary: something like Spenser meets The Indestructible Man; yet the wise-cracking feels shallow and the violence is pushed beyond the endurance of even the toughest of tough guys. I confess not to have warmed up to Walker and, as the situations grew more and more physically unlikely, my interest in finding a solution to the case puzzle waned. Critics have found Estleman, in this Walker outing, hitting new heights; if this is among the best, it leaves me uncurious to sample too deeply what has come before. On balance,
American Detective is entertaining but not memorable.
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