Customer Reviews

Angel Eyes (The Amos Walker Series #2)

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If you're a fan of PI fiction, and you're not reading Estleman's Amos Walker series, you're missing out on some of the best in the genre. Amos is a true gem, an underdog that can't say no and who's unwilling to give up, even if it would save his own skin. A wonderful character worth cheering for!

I listened to the unabridged audio version of this novel, and I really enjoyed it: with two caveats: the narrator read the novel WAY too fast, so that sometimes I felt myself wanting to ask him to SLOW DOWN. The second problem I had with this novel, was the recording. Either I received a flawed version, or there was something wrong with the print run. When it said to reverse to the other side, and adjust the balance control, sometimes, the side which I reversed to would be incorrect. (This appeared to be only on one tape, and the others functioned perfectly, so I was STILL able to enjoy the book, it just was a mite confusing to figure out which side I needed to be on).

Onto the plot: This is a typical Amos Walker novel. Amos is a tough-talking, one-liner spewing Private Investigator living in Detroit. He is hired by a blue-eyed stripper to investigate her own disappearance (?). Yes that's right. What follows is a series of events involving a pair of evil policemen, a Union Boss, and a corrupt ex-judge. In typical Amos form, Amos bulldogs his way through the mystery with some unexpected results.

A great addition to your Amos Walker collection... Boy I wish I could have as much imagination as Loren D. The one-liners alone make this story!

The second entry into the Amos Walker private detective series is not quite as strong as the debut, "Motor City Blue." Still, there is plenty of good stuff for fans of the genre. Walker is a wise cracking tough guy and Estleman writes with the immediacy and poetry of masters such as Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald. Walker is a much a part of his native Detroit as the Tigers. This entry in the series takes Walker on a sidetrip to a sleepy bedroom community that adds more fun to the storyline. Overall, Walker is one of the best hardboiled P.I.s around.

A word about the i-books publications that are reprinting Estleman's Walker novels. These are fine quality paperbacks, each of which features bonus material, in this case a short essay by Estleman about the novel and how he came up with his ideas. It is like the cherry on a fine dessert.

"Angel Eyes" is the second novel in the excellent Amos Walker private detective series. Though it doesn't hit with quite as much impact as the series debut, "Motor City Blues," it still packs a hefty wallop. Once again, Walker finds himself at odds with the police and mixed up with rough company as he tries to find a stripper who hired him to find her BEFORE she disappeared. Once again, the bad streets of Detroit are the setting for the story, though Estleman takes Walker on an effective side trip to a sleepy bedroom community. Walker is just what a great P.I. ought to be; a lonely, cynical, alcoholic who nevertheless cares a bit too much.

Walker is one of the best hardboiled P.I.'s working the genre. Fans of Travis McGee, Matthew Scudder, Harry Stoner and Phillip Marlowe should get themselves acquainted.

A number of the later books in Estleman's Amos Walker series are really great, but the second volume in the series is a disappointment. The characters and plot are hard to keep straight, the hardboiled narration is so exaggerated and incessant that it comes off almost as parodic (clearly not the author's intent), and I found myself having to force my way through the second half of the book even though it's only 240 pages long. On top of everything else, the iBooks edition is full of embarrassing typos -- did no one proofread it?

Buy THE WITCHFINDER if you want a good Walker novel. This one is a dud.

This is the second volume in the Amos Walker series and begins exceptionall well,when Walker is engaged by an exotic dancer in a seedy Detroit club to investigate a missing person-herself.She is in fear of her life and hires Walker,paying him with an expensive diamond ring.He gets involved in an altercation when someone tries to take it away from him and who turns up dead in the now missing dancers apartment.Walker is soon up to the neck in bodies,union politics and missing judges,coorupt investigators and policemen who hate his guts.There is abreak from city sordidness with a trip to bucolic Huron but even here death and the curse of gentrification and urbanization looms large.

The problem is the plot revelations that are handled clumsily and in an almost parodic way and that undercut fine writing and sharp characterization Estlemnan got way better at this later in his career and I would urge those eager to discover Walker to enter at a later point in the series

Its not his best by a long chalk.