Showing results by author "Loren Estleman" in All Categories

Originally published a decade ago and now expanded, this book is a homage to the greatest detective story writer of the 20th century, an Anglo-American who took Los Angeles, his adopted home, off the road maps and into the land of legend. For Raymond Chandler, who died in 1959, his literary descendants will do just about anything, and that includes contributing to an anthology honoring him. Thus, in here we find the likes of Sara Paretsky, Robert Crais, Loren D. Estleman, Jonathan Valin, Robert Campbell, Eric Van Lustbader, Simon Brett, Julie Smith, Jeremiah Healy, Roger L. Simon, James ...

In You Know Who Killed Me, by multiple award-winning author Loren D. Estleman, Amos Walker is at low ebb. Just released from a rehab clinic, the Detroit private detective has to marshal his energies to help solve a murder in Iroquois Heights, his least favorite town. The area is flooded with billboards rented by the widow of Donald Gates, an ordinary suburbanite found shot to death in his basement on New Year's Eve: "You know who killed me!"

For years, Donna ignored the guns in her husband's safe, his long hours, and all the cash he couldn't possibly have made as an "efficiency expert." But finally she was forced to admit that Peter Macklin is a killer for hire. Donna wants a divorce, and she wants to take her husband for all he's worth. But she won't get a penny if he's dead.

Each member of the five-man posse brought a special talent to the expedition, but not one of them was prepared for what greeted them at the top of a grassy slope in an aspen clearing one summer afternoon.

Everyone knows the Frankenstein monster was played by Boris Karloff. But before Karloff’s memorable portrayal, another famous 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of the monster. The screen test footage was lost for decades, until Valentino, the never-say-die film archivist, gets a hot tip about the whereabouts of the incriminating (for really bad, heavily accented acting) footage. But it comes with a price far greater than the money he’ll have to pay.

At a gala party held in memory of screen legend Greta Garbo, Hollywood film detective Valentino is having fun until the host, a hotshot developer named Rankin, tells Valentino about a certain letter from Garbo to his late wife. She and Garbo had been…close. Such a letter is of great interest to a film archivist like Valentino, but the plot thickens when Rankin tells Val that his assistant, Akers, is using this letter to blackmail him.

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 new to the series will devour these stories as they, with Walker, expose crime in some of the most corrupt alleys and steamy streets of Detroit.

Amos Walker has made a lot of friends - and a few enemies - in his years as a detective in Detroit, but he has never had to deal with quite the trouble he finds when he agrees to grant the deathbed wish of Beryl Garnet. Beryl was a madam with a long, successful career. She's got no regrets about that, but she does about her son. She hasn't seen him in a long time and would like him to know his mother never forgot him. So she asks Walker to make sure that her son gets her ashes when she's gone.

The winner of five Spurs, two Stirrups, and three Western Heritage Awards for his work, best-selling author Loren D. Estleman is among the greatest chroniclers of the American West. The eighth novel in Estleman’s popular and acclaimed Page Murdock series, this action-packed tale finds Murdock and his trusted five-shot Deane Adams revolver enforcing order in a world of chaos.

The Reverend Thomas Aquinas Sunsmith is halfway through his sermon when killers open fire. He is preaching against the evils of gambling, which a cartel of mobsters is trying to legalize in Detroit. The hail of gunfire misses the reverend, but a choir member is cut down—the first victim in the battle for the soul of the Motor City. The Detroit mob has erupted into civil war, and professional killer Peter Macklin is caught in the middle. A former mob employee, he has since tried to stay away from the savagery of organized crime, but now they're offering him a job too tempting to refuse.

The tabloids were full of it. Constance Thayer, after a night of clubbing, drinks, and drugs, had taken an automatic pistol from the collection of her industrialist husband Doyle Thayer Jr. and emptied it into his back, as he lay naked and unconscious in their Iroquois Heights home. The news of Constance Thayer's X-rated past breathed new life into the scandal for another month. Walker's job was to gather enough dirt on the late Mr. Thayer to make his widow look clean by comparison. What he found was a monstrous magnate, a dubious corpse, and a gang of country-style gunrunners.

Spring has come to Detroit's Sugartown enclave, and Amos Walker would like to feel kindly toward the human race. Unfortunately, his first case of the new season immediately leads him into trouble among the Polish settlers of neighboring Hamtramck, when old Martha Evancek hires him to look for her missing grandson. But even before Walker gets a chance to investigate, he's presented with a second case: an eminent Russian novelist who fears that someone is out to kill him.

Loren D. Estleman, one of America’s most critically acclaimed authors, is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee who has won three Shamuses, four Golden Spurs, and three Western Heritage Awards. One of Estleman’s most unique works, Billy Gashade follows the adventures of a 16-year-old vagabond who wanders the Old West, crossing paths with such legends as “Billy the Kid,” Jesse James, Chief Crazy Horse, and “Wild Bill” Hickok.

This suspenseful courtroom drama is based on the actual historical trial of Jack McCall, who shot James Butler Hickok from that most dishonorable position - behind.

A fragmented story comprised of anecdotal episodes from the early days of Hollywood.

On screen, Sandy Broderick is everything a newscaster is supposed to be. He has a deep voice, a 10,000-watt smile, and the God-given ability to banter with weathermen until his ears fall off. But when the cameras turn off, he has a private problem: His 20-year old son, Bud, has disappeared. Amos Walker is going to find him. The boy and his junkie girlfriend are both gone, and Broderick is terrified - not for his son, but for his career. The station is about to do an exposé on drugs in Detroit, and the newscaster doesn’t want his boy’s addict girlfriend to get in the way of his Pulitzer.

Los Angeles, 1921: Ex-Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo is living in quiet retirement when Wyatt Earp knocks on his door and asks him to track down Earp’s missing horse. What begins as horse thievery turns into a deeper mystery as Siringo and another ex-Pinkerton, the young Dashiell Hammett, follow clues that take them from the streets of Los Angeles to Jack London’s farm. There they discover a conspiracy masterminded by the notorious and powerful Joseph P. Kennedy.

Locked in a deadly feud, cowboys Randy Locke and Frank Farmer have spent decades attempting to annihilate each other any time they are within shooting distance. So far, the men are even. One of Frank's bullets has given Randy a permanent limp. Vain Frank wears a prosthetic ear, his own lost to Randy's assault. If either of them remembers the original reason for the feud, it seems moot now.

Amos Walker is hired by Helen and Dante Gunner, a bohemian Ann Arbor couple, to find Jerry Marcus, a film director who has disappeared with their investment money. It's one of Walker's easiest jobs to date. In just a few short hours, Walker locates Marcus in his bedroom...murdered, his body shoved into a cupboard, a bullet through his head.

Enter Valentino, a mild-mannered UCLA film archivist, who buys a decrepit movie palace and uncovers a skeleton in the secret Prohibition basement. He then makes a second discovery: long-lost, priceless, reels of film: Erich von Stroheim's infamous Greed. The LAPD wants to take the reels as evidence, jeopardizing the precious old film.