Loren D Estleman

A priest's death leads a Detroit gumshoe into a case of church corruption in this mordantly funny hard-boiled crime novel   Ralph Poteet is forty pounds overweight, out of gin, and he hasn't seen his gun in weeks. As far as private detectives go, he's not much to look at. But he's the only one in the building, and that's enough for Lyla Dane. A call girl who's far better at her job than Ralph is at his, she calls him in the middle of the night because...

A search for a vanished husband proves one of Amos Walker's strangest cases yet 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...

A remarkable new antihero, mob hit man Peter Macklin must end a hostage crisis on a tour boat in Lake Erie   Siegfried, a terrorist group made up of a killer, a bassist, an ex-marine, a demolitions expert, a Black Panther, a national guardsman, and a couple of spoiled teenagers, is about to become Detroit's worst nightmare. The motley gang boards a river cruise boat armed with M16s and enough explosives to burn the city down. They have eight hundred...

Masquerading as a soldier, a serial killer savages wartime Detroit; it's up to one detective and his ragtag team to stop him As the United States enters World War II, Detroit converts its factories to an "arsenal of democracy," fueling the American war machine. The city's sons leave to join the fight, but one man does not follow. Declared too unstable for combat, he steals an Air Force corporal's uniform. Using the uniform to inspire trust, he talks...

A dying architect engages Detroit PI Amos Walker to uncover someone who is spreading lies about him The 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.   In fact, Furlong has just become Walker's client. The architect is still...

Calling upon his considerable novelistic skills, Loren D. Estleman exposes the black heart of a seemingly stable, well-run city suddenly pitched into violence and chaos. A delicate balance of forces-greed and corruption, ambition and desire-run out of control in the wake of a serial killer's grisly rampage. A power struggle-between a police chief who has looked the other way for too long, a Mafia boss who holds the city's vices in his powerful grasp,...

In Loren D. Estleman's Journey of the Dead, when Pat Garrett killed his poker buddy, Billy the Kid, he had no idea what a terrible emotional price he would pay. Haunted by memories of Billy, Garrett wanders the New Mexico desert in a fruitless pursuit of peace. Deep in the same desert, an ancient Spanish alchemist searches for the fabled philosopher's stone. Resolutely alone in his quest he devotes his long life to hunting the secrets of the old...

A young black cop goes head-to-head with Detroit's elite undercover squad when one of its officers is accused of a racially fraught murder For Paul Kubicek and the city of Detroit, 1972 ends in a haze of blood. A police officer in need of extra work, Kubicek spends New Year's Eve moonlighting as a security guard at an upscale Grosse Pointe party. Just before midnight, in the sea of white faces, he sees three black men, a shotgun, and a pistol. Shooting...

Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places represents forty years of suspense writing in the short form. Previously published in a host of magazines and anthologies, with a new Preface and introductions to the stories written especially for this collection, these eighteen tales feature gangsters, private eyes, psychotic killers, hitmen, feuding families, prostitutes, prizefighters, bodyguards, corrupt cops, the walking dead, and ordinary people...

"Vamp is a hot new Valentino mystery by Loren D. Estleman, the master of the hard-boiled detective novel and recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award. Renowned film detective Valentino is on a quest to help restore The Comet, an extinct drive-in movie theater, and his trail leads him to Leo Kalishnikov, who requests a favor first - rid him of a blackmailer from his shady past, and he'll gladly hand over the money...