Retro
An Amos Walker Novel
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4.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In Loren D. Estleman's latest hard-boiled mystery, Detroit PI Amos Walker faces his most perplexing case yet when a dying madam's final request ensnares him in a web of murder spanning five decades.
Amos Walker, the quintessential noir detective, has made a lot of friends--and a few enemies--in his years on the Detroit crime scene. But he's never encountered a case as troubling as when he agrees to fulfill the death-bed wish of Beryl Garnet, a former madam. She asks Walker to locate her long-lost son and ensure he receives her ashes when she's gone.
Walker tracks down Garnet's son in Canada, where he fled as a Vietnam War protester in the 1960s. But shortly after this melancholy reunion, the son is found dead, with Walker the prime suspect in his murder. To clear his name and uncover the truth, Walker must delve into another shocking crime: the decades-old murder of Curtis Smallwood, a boxer who also happens to be the dead man's father.
As Walker navigates the dark underbelly of the past, he finds himself entangled in a mystery where two murders, committed 53 years apart, were inexplicably carried out with the same gun--in a place where the weapon couldn't possibly have been. With Retro, Loren D. Estleman delivers a suspenseful and intricate crime thriller, masterfully weaving together the threads of a haunting mystery that spans generations.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reading a new Amos Walker adventure is like settling down and listening to an old, reliably entertaining friend. In this 17th book in the series (after 2003's Poison Blonde), Beryl Garnet, a dying madam, summons the Detroit detective to find her long-missing son, Delwayne, to whom she wishes to leave her ashes. Since Delwayne fled to Canada during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Amos gets a Canadian counterpart to trace him. Soon after Amos meets the son, he winds up dead, and Amos becomes the main suspect in his shooting death. Amos later discovers that Delwayne's dad, a talented black boxer, was murdered in the 1940s and a single gun killed both father and son. A sucker for damsels in distress, Amos encounters more than one as he digs down into the muck for the real murderer. Estleman keeps Walker determinedly low-tech: he goes to the library, pores over records and does his own legwork. He riffs on the city and gently ribs Canadian culture across the river. Why does Amos drive to Toronto? It's a chance for him to smuggle back a box of alleged Cuban cigars, a longstanding Motor City tradition. In the process of setting things right, Amos has to let go of some old and new attachments, leaving the reader eager for more.
