Loren, D. Estleman

Page Updated: 08/10/98

Loren, D. Estleman

About the Author (Photo by Oliver Hunter)

Bibliography

Never Street

30 Sep 98

Whiskey River

First British Edition - Hale (1998) (1998)

Never Street
Never Street is the sixth novel in the Detroit series.
Neil Catalin, a video entrepreneur, had gone missing after watching Pitfall, a Dick Powell potboiler that featured a smouldering beauty, a hormone-driven private eye and a murderously jealous lover. For detective Amos Walker, Detroit's most famous private eye, the truth behind Neil Catalin's disappearance is going to be found somewhere among those black-and-white film images.
Catalin's wife shows Walker the home theatre where Catalin indulged his obsession for '40s' crime movies, and she tells the detective ‘l think he thinks he's in a noir film.' Catalin's femme fatale mistress, a would-be actress, claims she hasn't seen the victim in a year and Catalin's business partner doesn't waste any time pointing Walker in the wrong direction. The detective's next step is to retrace Catalin's previous disappearance and pay a visit to the idyllic Mackinac Island.
Here in a sanatorium, a seedy shrink is running a dangerous scam on the side. Meanwhile, down in the Motor City, a missing $92,000 from a series of video store robberies is colliding with the Catalin case - and so is a series of murders. With a heavy Luger caressing his right kidney and a man in a noisy Camaro haunting his steps, Walker has become the auteur in a stark, unrolling nightmare of lies, double crosses and violence as brooding as storm clouds.
'The reigning king of the traditional tough-yet-tender style of crime novel. Estleman expertly manipulates a complex plot'. Publishers Weekly

First British Edition - Scribners (1991)

Whiskey River
Whiskey River is the first novel in the Detroit series.
It's 1928, and America is thundering along on wheels made in Detroit, a city growing fat by leaps and bounds. And while New York and Chicago are just waking up to the bloody hangover of Prohibition, Detroit itself has already been there for a year-filling its bathtubs with bootleg booze and its pockets with cash. This carved-up pirate's paradise is newspaperman Constantine 'Connie' Minor's territory, and he couldn't have picked one more dangerous.
Connie follows his reporter's nose through high society and low-life sleaze, chronicling the rise and fall of charismatic young gangster Jack Dance. From sultry Hattie Long's roving who rehouse/speakeasy to the Mobsters' private burial ground of Lake St Claire, he swaps secrets and strikes bargains with ganglords like Joey Machine, a modern-day savage with nothing on his mind but blood and money, and tough Prohibition cops like Lieutenant Valery Kozlowski, a man on the take, 260 pounds of hard fat in a fedora. It's a story that gets hotter by the minute; a scoop that could make Connie famous - if it doesn't kill him first.
Whiskey River is a portrait of the violent, turbulent era when armoured sedans prowled Jazz Age streets and sheiks and flappers met to toast the death of American innocence with outlaw liquor. A major novel from the acknowledged successor to Chandler, it takes us into the lives and hearts of men and women who turned rotgut into liquid gold and fuelled the most fascinating and dangerous era in American criminal history.
Whiskey River, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award
'An exceptional piece of crime fiction' Los Angeles Times
'Whiskey River is gritty, turbulent, unsettling, violent… It is also superb' Chicago Sun Times
'Estleman spearheads the classic genre's best…. A sparkling Detroit-based story which is genuine Estleman, not just post-Chandler' Sunday Times
'Full of authentic crackle, fizz and excellent one-liners… he gives you the feel of a city that is squalid, exciting and dangerous' Julian Symons, Independent
'Sulphurous action and gritty writing … the best since Chandler' Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
'Slick pattern stuff, like a good old black-and-white gangster movie tinted up for the big screen' Scotsman
'Whiskey River is Loren Estleman uncorking a winner' Philadelphia Inquirer

About The Author
Loren D. Estleman is the author of many novels including the highly acclaimed Detroit-based Amos Walker mysteries. A winner of seven national writing awards, he has also been nominated fro the American book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is an authority on criminal history and the American West. His first Detroit novel, Whiskey River, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Never Street (Hale, 1998) Sep 98 (Amos Walker)

Whiskey River (Scribners, 1991)

Sweet Women Lie (Macmillan, 1990) (Amos Walker)

Any Man's Death (Mysterious Press, 1989) (Peter Macklin)

Silent Thunder (Macmillan, 1989) (Amos Walker)

General Murders Short Stories (Macmillan, 1989) Ten Amos Walker Mysteries (Amos Walker)

Downriver (Macmillan, 1988) (Amos Walker)

The Strangers (Hale, 1988)

Kill Zone (Mysterious Press, 1987) (Peter Macklin)

Lady Yesterday (Macmillan, 1987) (Amos Walker)

Roses are Dead (Century, 1987) (Peter Macklin)

Every Brilliant Eye (Macmillan, 1986) (Amos Walker)

Sugertown (Macmillan, 1986) (Amos Walker)

Mister St. John (Hale, 1985)

The Glass Highway (Hale, 1984) (Amos Walker)

Aces and Eights (Hale, 1983)

Murdock's Law (Hale, 1983)

The High Rocks (Hale, 1983)

The Midnight Man (Hale, 1983) (Amos Walker)

The Wolfer (Hale, 1983)

Angel Eyes (Hale, 1982) (Amos Walker)

Motor City Blue (Hale, 1982) (Amos Walker)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Holmes (Penguin, 1980) (Sherlock Holmes)

Sherlock Holmes Versus Dracula (NEL, 1978) (Sherlock Holmes)

Bloody Season

Edsel

Gun Man

Peeper

Stamping Ground

The Hider

The Oklahoma Punk

The Old Bill

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