Loren D. Estleman

"Film detective Valentino is summoned to the estate of Ignacio Bozel to collect a prized donation to the university's movie library: Bleak Street, a film from the classic noir period, thought lost for more than sixty years. Bleak Street was never released. Its star, Van Oliver, a gifted and charismatic actor with alleged ties to the mob, disappeared while the project was in post-production, presumably murdered by gangland rivals: another one of Hollywood's...

A collection of stories featuring a UCLA film archivist who searches for lost footage-and finds trouble instead Though he shares his name with the most famous heartthrob of the silent era, Valentino is not part of film history. Rather, he is a scholar of it, working at UCLA to help find and preserve rare films. But not all movies are lost because of careless storage. Some were hidden deliberately, and there are those who will kill to ensure they stay...

Short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors When a bibliophile is murdered, it takes a bookseller to solve the crime Good Advice, New Mexico, is a sunny town with a gloomy bookshop. The store's eerie corridors are the province of Avery Sharecross, an ex-cop who has made the transition from chasing killers to tracking rare books. One afternoon, the local sheriff interrupts his book club meeting, and Sharecross's old career collides with...

During the Great Depression, a ruthless killer breaks out of prison to reclaim his status as Public Enemy Number One in this chilling, action-packed novel   Before Dillinger, before Bonnie and Clyde, there was Virgil Ballard, the most ruthless killer the United States has ever seen.   Ballard gets his start in the early 1920s, hijacking liquor trucks and selling the bootlegged hooch. He has a youthful face and the eyes of a killer, and it isn't...

In the throes of Prohibition-era Detroit, one reporter follows the gripping and violent life of a man who helped keep the booze flowing Like nowhere else in America, Detroit flourished during Prohibition. The constant flow of liquor from across the Canadian border made Lake Erie a war zone, and lined the pockets of the men who ran the Purple Gang, the Unione Siciliana, and the Little Jewish Navy. As the mob bosses got rich, they mingled with the upper...

Detroit PI Amos Walker attempts to clear the name of a woman accused of murdering her husband Constance 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...

While trying to help an old friend out of trouble, Detroit PI Amos Walker finds some trouble of his own 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 Detroit News, 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...

An aged mobster's adopted daughter disappears, and Detroit PI Amos Walker is the only man tough enough to seek her out It has been years since Ben Morningstar retired. The feared mobster, now decades past his prime, left his deadly business behind and retired to Phoenix. His only concern now is Maria, daughter of a long-ago murdered friend, whom Morningstar has raised as his own. When she disappears, the old man goes into action once more.   When...

With his usual knife-sharp prose in cutting form, Loren D. Estleman proves that he can carve a short story as cleanly as the full-length Amos Walker detective novels. Detroit's favorite private investigator, Amos Walker, barrels through this collection of five short stories by Shamus Award winner Loren D. Estleman. General Murders upholds Estleman's reputation as a master of the short story. Both card-carrying fans of Amos Walker and those who are...

Loren D. Estleman has garnered heaps of praise for his stylish novels, which are charged with razor-sharp wit and sparkling dialogue. The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, reminiscent of the author's Mister St. John and The Stranglers, is an engrossing story of California's colorful past. In 1913, Dmitri Pulski wants to be the next Jack London. He spends countless hours at his father's ice company in a shed, writing short stories. When sent...