The Witchfinder
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- € 7,99
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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 near death, yes, but far from the hospital. Before he goes, he has an item of revenge he wants seen to, and Walker is to be his instrument. Eight years prior, a salacious photo caused Furlong to cut loose his young lover, a photo he has now learned is a fake. He hires Walker to find out who poisoned his happiness, so that he can repay the favor before it's too late.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author's personal collection.
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Mystery fans who think that Estleman's novels about the Detroit-based PI Amos Walker (returned after a seven-year retirement in 1997's Never Street) make him the natural heir of Raymond Chandler will have that conviction confirmed here. Walker's latest tale is so rich in Chandler-esque dialogue and description that it would likely elicit a boozy chuckle of recognition from the master himself: "Stuart Lund came in at six-two and three hundred pounds in gray silk tailoring with a large head of wavy yellow hair, blue eyes like wax drippings, and a black chevron-shaped moustach he hadn't bothered to bleach." Lund is a lawyer who summons Walker to a secret meeting at a Detroit airport hotel with Jay Bell Furlong, a world-famous architect who is supposedly dying in Los Angeles. Before he passes on, Furlong wants Walker to find the person who ended the architect's romance with a much younger woman eight years ago by sending him a photo of her in bed with another man. Furlong has just discovered that the photo was a fake. The possible suspects include various Furlong family members and several rivals. Struggling through an overheated Detroit described as vividly and lovingly as Chandler's L.A., Walker survives a bullet to his head and sneaks out of the hospital against doctors' orders to get on with the case, just as Philip Marlowe would have. There may be a few too many descriptions of staircases, buildings and old cars, but Estleman more than makes up for these digressions by drawing new life from one of the genre's classic resources.
