The Amos Walker Mysteries
Latest release: October 13, 2015
Series
14
Books
About this ebook series
The first book in the long-running Amos Walker Mysteries introduces the hard-boiled Detroit detective as he searches for an aging mobster’s missing adopted daughter
Private eye Amos Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was thrown out of the Police Academy for punching a fellow cadet. He’s a hard man in a ruined city, scratching out a living looking for lost things.
Walker’s latest case comes by way of ex-mobster Ben Morningstar, who’s been living out his retirement in Phoenix while raising Maria, the daughter of a long-ago murdered friend. Only now, Maria is missing and the gangster needs Walker’s help. But the trail has gone cold—the only clue is a faded pornographic snapshot.
Never one to give up, Walker witnesses the kidnapping of a former Vietnam friend and solves the murder of a young black labor leader while slugging his way to a solution.
Fans of Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction will find Estleman’s lean prose, retro style, and tough-guy hero irresistible.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Private eye Amos Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was thrown out of the Police Academy for punching a fellow cadet. He’s a hard man in a ruined city, scratching out a living looking for lost things.
Walker’s latest case comes by way of ex-mobster Ben Morningstar, who’s been living out his retirement in Phoenix while raising Maria, the daughter of a long-ago murdered friend. Only now, Maria is missing and the gangster needs Walker’s help. But the trail has gone cold—the only clue is a faded pornographic snapshot.
Never one to give up, Walker witnesses the kidnapping of a former Vietnam friend and solves the murder of a young black labor leader while slugging his way to a solution.
Fans of Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction will find Estleman’s lean prose, retro style, and tough-guy hero irresistible.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Motor City Blue
Book 1 · Jun 2011 ·
3.5star
The first book in the long-running Amos Walker Mysteries introduces the hard-boiled Detroit detective as he searches for an aging mobster’s missing adopted daughter
Private eye Amos Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was thrown out of the Police Academy for punching a fellow cadet. He’s a hard man in a ruined city, scratching out a living looking for lost things.
Walker’s latest case comes by way of ex-mobster Ben Morningstar, who’s been living out his retirement in Phoenix while raising Maria, the daughter of a long-ago murdered friend. Only now, Maria is missing and the gangster needs Walker’s help. But the trail has gone cold—the only clue is a faded pornographic snapshot.
Never one to give up, Walker witnesses the kidnapping of a former Vietnam friend and solves the murder of a young black labor leader while slugging his way to a solution.
Fans of Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction will find Estleman’s lean prose, retro style, and tough-guy hero irresistible.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Private eye Amos Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was thrown out of the Police Academy for punching a fellow cadet. He’s a hard man in a ruined city, scratching out a living looking for lost things.
Walker’s latest case comes by way of ex-mobster Ben Morningstar, who’s been living out his retirement in Phoenix while raising Maria, the daughter of a long-ago murdered friend. Only now, Maria is missing and the gangster needs Walker’s help. But the trail has gone cold—the only clue is a faded pornographic snapshot.
Never one to give up, Walker witnesses the kidnapping of a former Vietnam friend and solves the murder of a young black labor leader while slugging his way to a solution.
Fans of Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction will find Estleman’s lean prose, retro style, and tough-guy hero irresistible.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Angel Eyes
Book 2 · Jun 2011 ·
2.0star
Hardboiled noir starring Detroit PI Amos Walker: “For readers who can’t get enough of Elmore Leonard and Ross Thomas, try Estleman. He’s that good” (People).
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. She expects to disappear any day now, she says, and she wants to be found. He goes to her apartment the next day, hoping for more information, but Ann was true to her word and has disappeared completely, leaving behind nothing but a carton of Bel-Airs and a dead man on the floor. Unshaken by the body or the circumstances, Walker sets out to find his client. After all, she paid in advance. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
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. She expects to disappear any day now, she says, and she wants to be found. He goes to her apartment the next day, hoping for more information, but Ann was true to her word and has disappeared completely, leaving behind nothing but a carton of Bel-Airs and a dead man on the floor. Unshaken by the body or the circumstances, Walker sets out to find his client. After all, she paid in advance. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
The Midnight Man
Book 3 · Jun 2011 ·
4.0star
A New York Times Notable Book: A cop is shot and a Detroit PI is determined to find the culprit in this mystery by a multiple Shamus Award winner.
A routine case puts Amos Walker on the highway to Ann Arbor, but the trip turns deadly just a few miles outside of Detroit. Tailing a trucker suspected of faking hijackings, Walker does his best to keep a safe distance, but is recognized anyway. The trucker runs him off the road, and it’s only the tight handling of an American-made Cutlass that keeps Walker from becoming roadkill. A good-natured policeman helps him out, and the detective continues on his way. But the next day, a bullet near the spine sends Walker’s new friend into intensive care, and Walker sets out to find the scum who shot the cop. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
A routine case puts Amos Walker on the highway to Ann Arbor, but the trip turns deadly just a few miles outside of Detroit. Tailing a trucker suspected of faking hijackings, Walker does his best to keep a safe distance, but is recognized anyway. The trucker runs him off the road, and it’s only the tight handling of an American-made Cutlass that keeps Walker from becoming roadkill. A good-natured policeman helps him out, and the detective continues on his way. But the next day, a bullet near the spine sends Walker’s new friend into intensive care, and Walker sets out to find the scum who shot the cop. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
The Glass Highway
Book 4 · Jun 2011 ·
5.0star
A PI scours Detroit for a newscaster’s missing son: “[Estleman] remains among the top echelon of American private-eye specialists” (The New York Times).
On screen, Sandy Broderick is everything a newscaster is supposed to be. He has a deep voice, a ten-thousand-watt smile, and the God-given ability to banter with weathermen until his ears fall off. But when the cameras turn off, he has a private problem: His twenty-year old son, Bud, has disappeared. Amos Walker is going to find him. The boy and his junkie girlfriend are both gone, and Broderick is terrified—not for his son, but for his career. The station is about to do an exposé on drugs in Detroit, and the newscaster doesn’t want his boy’s addict girlfriend to get in the way of his Pulitzer. This new client may be sleazy, but Walker handles scum for a living, and it’s time to go to work. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
On screen, Sandy Broderick is everything a newscaster is supposed to be. He has a deep voice, a ten-thousand-watt smile, and the God-given ability to banter with weathermen until his ears fall off. But when the cameras turn off, he has a private problem: His twenty-year old son, Bud, has disappeared. Amos Walker is going to find him. The boy and his junkie girlfriend are both gone, and Broderick is terrified—not for his son, but for his career. The station is about to do an exposé on drugs in Detroit, and the newscaster doesn’t want his boy’s addict girlfriend to get in the way of his Pulitzer. This new client may be sleazy, but Walker handles scum for a living, and it’s time to go to work. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Sugartown
Book 5 · Jun 2011 ·
4.5star
DIVA missing boy forces Detroit PI Amos Walker to investigate a long-cold case/divDIV/divDIVIt is hardly unusual for an elderly woman to ask Amos Walker to search for her grandchild. As a private detective in one of the country’s roughest cities, tracking missing persons is the way he makes most of his money. But Martha Evancek’s grandson Michael has been missing for nearly twenty years, having disappeared in the aftermath of a murder./divDIV /divDIVWhen Michael’s father was laid off from the Chrysler plant, he quarreled with his wife and then reached for his shotgun, killing her, his daughter, and finally himself. An eleven-year-old Michael was left to find the bodies, and he vanished soon after. Now, for the old woman’s sake, Amos Walker takes up a cold scent. He expects to find nothing, but he’s in for an unpleasant surprise./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div
Every Brilliant Eye
Book 6 · Jun 2011 ·
4.5star
“For readers who can’t get enough of Elmore Leonard and Ross Thomas, try Estleman. He’s that good” (People).
Barry Stackpole was tough once. Amos Walker met him in a Cambodian shell crater when Walker was serving his country and Stackpole was on the payroll of the DetroitNews, and they formed the kind of bond that war often creates. At war’s end, they returned to the Motor City, where Stackpole took to reporting crimes and Walker to solving them. A violent run-in with a big time mobster left Stackpole a leg and two fingers short, and he became an alcoholic. He has made several attempts to get his life straight since, but never quite managed. Now he’s fallen off the wagon again, harder than ever before, and his girlfriend begs Walker to find him before he drinks himself to death. But in Detroit, death can find a man in many ways. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Barry Stackpole was tough once. Amos Walker met him in a Cambodian shell crater when Walker was serving his country and Stackpole was on the payroll of the DetroitNews, and they formed the kind of bond that war often creates. At war’s end, they returned to the Motor City, where Stackpole took to reporting crimes and Walker to solving them. A violent run-in with a big time mobster left Stackpole a leg and two fingers short, and he became an alcoholic. He has made several attempts to get his life straight since, but never quite managed. Now he’s fallen off the wagon again, harder than ever before, and his girlfriend begs Walker to find him before he drinks himself to death. But in Detroit, death can find a man in many ways. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Lady Yesterday
Book 7 · Jun 2011 ·
0.0star
DIVA chance encounter with an old flame sends Detroit PI Amos Walker on a hunt for her long-lost father/divDIV/divDIVIris 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 just learned the old trombone player may still be alive. Walker offers to dig for him: a welcome-home present for an old flame./divDIV /divDIVThe search leads him straight to the dark heart of the Detroit jazz scene, a seedy world where Walker is right at home, and into the crosshairs of some of the cruelest men in a very mean town./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div
Downriver
Book 8 · Jun 2011 ·
4.0star
DIVAn ex-con hires Detroit PI Amos Walker to find the people who put him behind bars/divDIV/divDIVCountless 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 river for knocking over an armored car that he had never seen before./divDIV /divDIVTwenty years later he’s set free, and the first man he calls on is Amos Walker. With twenty years of savings he buys a month of Walker’s time, asking him for help finding the men who robbed the armored car. DeVries has already paid for stealing that $200,000, and now it’s time to collect it./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div
Silent Thunder
Book 9 · Jun 2011 ·
5.0star
DIVDetroit PI Amos Walker attempts to clear the name of a woman accused of murdering her husband/divDIV/divDIVConstance Thayer probably isn’t a nice woman. If she was, she wouldn’t have shot her husband to death. But just because she has a taste for nightlife—drinking, clubbing, and the finest hard drugs—doesn’t mean her husband didn’t deserve it. An automobile magnate in a city where internal combustion still reigns supreme, Doyle Thayer Jr. was a wife-beater with a collection of assault weapons that could furnish an army./divDIV /divDIVAt least that’s the story spun by Amos Walker’s new client, a large investigatory outfit hired by Mrs. Thayer to clear her name. Walker’s job is to get the dirt on her late husband, to learn enough about him that her shooting looks like an act of heroism. And please, his new bossbegs, don’t make any waves—a sure sign that the man doesn’t know Amos Walker./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div
Sweet Women Lie
Book 10 · Jun 2011 ·
5.0star
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, she has played the part of moll to one of Detroit’s big-name gangsters, a powerful man stalked by death. Tired of a life looking over her shoulder, Hope pawns everything she owns in an attempt to buy her way out. She entrusts Walker with a suitcase heavy with cash, and asks him to play delivery boy—a simple assignment that doesn’t take long to turn deadly. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Never Street
Book 11 · Jun 2011 ·
5.0star
Detroit PI Amos Walker must find a missing movie fan before the credits start to roll—“Sharp and energetic . . . a joy from start to finish” (Chicago Tribune).
What could be more innocent than watching old movies? For Neil Catalin, a wealthy man with a happy home, old-fashioned pictures were a hobby that became an obsession. But he wasn’t watching The Wizard of Oz. Crime movies were his passion, the sort where life is cheap and death is free, and Catalin sank himself into them as an escape from the stresses of suburbia, when soaring debt threatened to overwhelm the life he had created. Now he has disappeared, and his wife believes the clue may be in his collection of gruesome classics. She calls on Amos Walker, who ventures into a black-and-white past in his hunt for the missing man. The journey is far from escapism, because this is Detroit, where the guns don’t fire blanks. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
What could be more innocent than watching old movies? For Neil Catalin, a wealthy man with a happy home, old-fashioned pictures were a hobby that became an obsession. But he wasn’t watching The Wizard of Oz. Crime movies were his passion, the sort where life is cheap and death is free, and Catalin sank himself into them as an escape from the stresses of suburbia, when soaring debt threatened to overwhelm the life he had created. Now he has disappeared, and his wife believes the clue may be in his collection of gruesome classics. She calls on Amos Walker, who ventures into a black-and-white past in his hunt for the missing man. The journey is far from escapism, because this is Detroit, where the guns don’t fire blanks. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
The Witchfinder
Book 12 · Jun 2011 ·
0.0star
DIVA dying architect engages Detroit PI Amos Walker to uncover someone who is spreading lies about him/divDIV/divDIVThe world is waiting for Jay Bell Furlong to die. The grand old man of American architecture is on deathwatch in a Los Angeles hospital, and it won’t be long before his obituary hits the front page. Only Amos Walker knows that the impending death is a bit farther off than that./divDIV /divDIVIn fact, Furlong has just become Walker’s client. The architect is still near death, yes, but far from the hospital. Before he goes, he has an item of revenge he wants seen to, and Walker is to be his instrument. Eight years prior, a salacious photo caused Furlong to cut loose his young lover, a photo he has now learned is a fake. He hires Walker to find out who poisoned his happiness, so that he can repay the favor before it’s too late./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div
The Hours of the Virgin
Book 13 · Oct 2015 ·
5.0star
Detroit PI Amos Walker searches for a priceless medieval illuminated manuscript—and for evidence that can put his former partner’s killer behind bars
Hired by a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts to serve as his bodyguard during a transaction involving a stolen illuminated manuscript, Amos Walker enters a darkened skin-flick theater where the exchange is supposed to take place. When the deal goes south, he’s lucky to leave with his life . . . and a new lead to pursue in collaring the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago.
In a case that features a wheelchair-bound pornographer and rare book collector, an ultra-slick art expert, a trophy wife, and a white-collar criminal, Walker faces one of the greatest challenges of his career as a present-day crime draws him back to one of the darkest episodes of his past.
The Hours of the Virgin is the 13th book in the Amos Walker Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Hired by a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts to serve as his bodyguard during a transaction involving a stolen illuminated manuscript, Amos Walker enters a darkened skin-flick theater where the exchange is supposed to take place. When the deal goes south, he’s lucky to leave with his life . . . and a new lead to pursue in collaring the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago.
In a case that features a wheelchair-bound pornographer and rare book collector, an ultra-slick art expert, a trophy wife, and a white-collar criminal, Walker faces one of the greatest challenges of his career as a present-day crime draws him back to one of the darkest episodes of his past.
The Hours of the Virgin is the 13th book in the Amos Walker Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Sinister Heights
Book 15 · Oct 2015 ·
5.0star
Detroit PI Amos Walker steps into a lethal family feud when the beautiful widow of a powerful industrialist hires him to find her late husband’s illegitimate children
Leland Stutch was building automobiles before Henry Ford ever dreamed up the Model T. He dominated Detroit for most of the 20th century as the auto industry soared and then began its long, slow descent. When Stutch’s widow contacts Amos Walker, the private eye expects to meet a doddering old lady. Instead he encounters Rayellen, a 30-something beauty with washboard abs and 1 of the most unusual propositions he’s ever heard.
Unconcerned with matrimonial vows, the most powerful man in Detroit left mistresses—and love children—all over Michigan. To stave off any future paternity suits, Rayellen hires Walker to locate Stutch’s illegitimate offspring and pay them off—a seemingly simple task that draws the detective into a dysfunctional family’s war zone and a violent case of kidnapping and murder.
Sinister Heights is the 15th book in the Amos Walker Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Leland Stutch was building automobiles before Henry Ford ever dreamed up the Model T. He dominated Detroit for most of the 20th century as the auto industry soared and then began its long, slow descent. When Stutch’s widow contacts Amos Walker, the private eye expects to meet a doddering old lady. Instead he encounters Rayellen, a 30-something beauty with washboard abs and 1 of the most unusual propositions he’s ever heard.
Unconcerned with matrimonial vows, the most powerful man in Detroit left mistresses—and love children—all over Michigan. To stave off any future paternity suits, Rayellen hires Walker to locate Stutch’s illegitimate offspring and pay them off—a seemingly simple task that draws the detective into a dysfunctional family’s war zone and a violent case of kidnapping and murder.
Sinister Heights is the 15th book in the Amos Walker Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.