Tangled Web UK Review December 2000
Angel Eyes by
Loren, D. Estleman
pbk out May 00
(Ibooks)
Amos Walker is summoned to a club, The Crescent, to meet Ann Maringer. She is a go-go dancer, no longer young, with eyes that are "large and blue and childlike, untouched by time and experience." She senses that her life is in danger and plans to disappear. She wants Walker to find her.and gives him a ring as a retainer which, she says, is worth "seven hundred and fifty from any honest jeweller, but it is worth more." It should buy her three days of Walker's time. Then the band plays "Angel Eyes", the old Sinatra hit. It is her cue and she leaves him, saying that she will see him later at her flat.
Outside the club Walker is threatened by the waiter who demands the ring. Walker fends off the attack and leaves the man unconscious. Somewhat shaken by the encounter he goes back to his office to have a drink and pass the time until he is due to see Ann again at her flat. Ann is not there, but the waiter is and he is dead, The police arrive before he can leave and suspicion falls on Walker. This becomes the pattern for the other murders that take place. Walker finds a body, the police arrive and he is the prime suspect. In each case Walker is harassed by the police, despite having a friend of sorts in the police department,John Alderdyce. Alderdyce helps, but is not exactly friendly and Walker is forced to dig himself out of the ever-deepening hole that he finds himself in.
This is early Amos Walker, nicely reprinted in soft back. The first edition of 1981 is the most sought after of all Estelman's books "fetching three-figure prices at auctions and in catalogues", as Estelman explains in an Afterword. Like all the Walker books it is first rate and unputdownable. The story moves swiftly to its inevitable climax in a shootout that "was straight out of the last act of something by Shakespeare", as Lieutenant Fitzroy puts it. A literate cop, indeed! The writing is excellent and echoes tha master, Raymond Chandler: "With both guards up front there was room enough for the three of us and a bowling alley in the deep back seat. There was a telephone in the car and a portable bar." Loren Estelman never disappoints.
(
John Boyles
)
