Smoke on the water

In the thirty-second Amos Walker mystery (the first, Motor City Blue, was published in 1980), the Detroit private investigator is hired to ferret out the truth behind a hit-and-run that claimed the life of a lawyer who was, apparently, in possession of confidential documents--potentially damning to certain individuals--that have since gone missing. As fans of the long-running series know, the case will get a lot more complicated before Amos finds his way to its conclusion. Estleman is such an arrestingly imaginative writer, for example: "The sculptures, in clay and plaster, were mostly classical, centaurs and dryads and a spectacularly endowed goat-man playing a Jew's-harp like it was gutbucket jazz." Reading him is such a joy-filled experience. This is also one of Amos' best cases. Estleman continues to demonstrate why he's at the top of his field.

Wisecracking Detroit PI Amos Walker returns (after City Walls) in this superb hard-boiled mystery from Shamus winner Estleman. After attorney Spencer Bennett is killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a busy street, a wily representative for Bennett's firm hires Walker to look into the incident. At the time of his death, Bennett was carrying sensitive legal files that have since gone missing; his employers are eager to retrieve one in particular, which contains documents from a wrongful termination suit. Walker locates an eyewitness who's able to identify the vehicle and learns it was owned by Bennett and stolen by whoever ran him down. The fuzzy fate of the hit-and-run driver only adds to the mystery, and the more Walker digs, the foggier the case gets, with the details eventually becoming as murky as the smoke emanating from nearby Canadian wildfires. Estleman heightens the stakes with a steadily rising body count, and maneuvers his gumshoe into a satisfying, suspenseful showdown against a worthy adversary. The razor-sharp prose ("For weeks the air smelled like a wet dog dipped in lip wax") is a bonus. This is a top-shelf crime story. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Feb.)