Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Loren D. Estleman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Amos Walker Mysteries | Publication Date: March 21, 2006

Sometimes friendship is the only thing you can count on. Just before Thanksgiving, an old friend, cigarette smuggler Jeff Starzek, saved private detective Amos Walker's life by getting him to the hospital when he was shot. After New Year's, Walker gets a frantic call from Starzek's sister. Jeff's missing; hasn't been in touch for weeks. It's just not like him.

Now Walker, still gimpy and rehabbing, is trying to find Starzek. All he has to go on is his knowledge of Starzek's territory--the Lake Huron shore north of Detroit--and a tip from Homeland Security agent Herbert Clemson. Clemson, who is also looking for Starzek, says the missing man might be connected to counterfeiters with ties to terrorists.

Walker can't really see Starzek getting involved in a scheme so different from his usual line of work. When he visits the man's brother, a minister of an evangelical church, Walker finds a huge stack of treasury paper perfect for printing $20 bills--but Starzek's brother is also missing. The counterfeiters are damn serious--serious enough to make Starzek's brother disappear, and serious enough to try and kill Walker when he pokes around their operation. Hell of a way to protect an investment.

But Walker, gimpy, in pain, cold and tired, can't give up on Starzek. It's a matter of friendship, and he won't let down a friend. He just hopes his loyalty doesn't get him killed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Amos Walker, Estleman's hard-boiled Detroit PI, shows no sign of losing steam in the 18th novel in this Shamus Award-winning series (Retro, etc.). When a routine job tracing a deadbeat dad turns violent, Walker's life is saved by Jeff Starzek, an acquaintance on the wrong side of the law. That act of kindness eventually involves the detective in a murky, twisty inquiry into Starzek's disappearance. The trail leads Walker to a cold, desolate area near Lake Huron and the bizarre Church of the Inland Sea, an evangelical house of worship marked by images of the martyred St. Sebastian. Evidence turns up suggesting that Starzek has moved from smuggling cigarettes to working with a terrorist counterfeiting ring. Unlike many other authors, Estleman successfully introduces a topical post-9/11 plot line into his creation's world. No current writer has consistently evoked Chandler and Marlowe like Estleman, whose steady if unflashy work has yet to gain him the plaudits or name recognition he deserves. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

It's fitting that Spielberg's cult classic Duel is playing in the background when Amos Walker joins the crowd at a smoke-filled trucker's bar. Soon enough, the cynical Detroit PI finds himself in a deadly vehicle duel of his own. By that time, however, he's already been shot, bludgeoned, and arrested--all during the course of tracking down a man who once saved Amos' life, cigarette smuggler Jeff Starzek, now possibly involved with counterfeiters. Though hobbled by a bullet that nearly cost him his leg, Walker doesn't slow down much as he picks up Starzek's trail, which leads from a middle-class suburb in Detroit to a tiny evangelical church to a remote motel in frigid northern Michigan and then back again before things finally fall into place. In this, Walker's eighteenth outing, Estleman delivers his usual combination of gripping action and satisfying irony, further cementing the solitary, hardboiled PI's reputation for giving as good as he gets. The riveting chase scenes are tailor-made for the screen. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books (March 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765312239
• ISBN-13: 978-0765312235
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Since the appearance of his first novel in 1976, Loren D. Estleman has written more than 65 books and hundreds of short stories and articles. Alone (Dec 2009, Forge Books) is the second in a new series about L.A. film detective Valentino, and features Greta Garbo.

To kick off the new decade, Estleman's The Book of Murdock (eighth in the U.S. Deputy Marshal Page Murdock series) will appear in March and, to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of Private Detective Amos Walker, The Left-Handed Dollar will publish in December. It's the 20th novel in the award-winning series.

An authority on both criminal history and the American West, Estleman has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award.

He has received seventeen national writing awards: four Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, two Outstanding Mystery Writer of the Year awards from Popular Fiction Monthly, two Stirrup Awards for outstanding articles in the Western Writers of America magazine, The Roundup, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author's Award. In 2007, Nicotine Kiss was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.

Estleman graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Journalism. On April 27, 2002, EMU presented him with an honorary doctorate in letters. He left the job market in 1980 to write full time. He lives in Michigan and is married to writer Deborah Morgan. For more information, please visit his website: www.lorenestleman.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Kissed!, March 31, 2006

By 

JAMES AGNEW "UBU ROI" (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Thank God for Loren Estleman. I recently plowed my way through a book that a former classmate, now a creative writing instructor, had written which had all the fictive elements currently in vogue - irony, surface cleverness, political correctness, name checks of celebrities high and low - but lacked the characteristics the academic literati have deemed passe, like plot, character, credibility and structure. This misbegotten volume, along with the run of substandard mysteries I've encountered lately, made me depressed as to what passes for a novel these days. Depressed, that is, until I opened Nicotine Kiss.

From Estleman's first sentence the reader is palpably there, not confronting a snarky, self-conscious pile of words, but immersed in a yeasty, full blooded world that's very much like ours, except the dialogue's better. And our tour guide to that world is old friend Amos Walker, a crusty, observant and mordantly funny private eye of the old school, and proud of it.

His Maltese Falcon on this adventure is one Jeff Starzek, a cigarette smuggler and old acquaintance who, after saving Amos's life (or at least his leg) disappears, ensuing that Amos will pull out all the stops to find him. The closer he gets to Starzek the more trouble he gets into, both from the nominally good guys and the nominally bad guys. In one of the many eminently quotable passages Amos describes his place in the scheme of things:

Chaos and order, black and white, the rock and the hard place. I'd built my business square between them. That makes me the only police force some people can turn to when they have a complaint. It's a definite niche. The pay stinks, but the hours are long, and the benefits include county food, a cot, and free burial by the state.

Estleman is able to effortlessly integrate timely elements like terrorism, the Office of Homeland Security and religious extremism into a spellbinding plot that unfolds in logical yet unexpected ways, Amos's wounded leg adding an interesting complication to the usual tough guy act. He's on the road a lot, leaving Detroit for the Lake Huron coastline and Michigan's own legendary Thumb, encountering great characters, all finely drawn from the most major to the most minor. Estleman knows how to set a scene memorably and economically and then atomize it with a few shotgun blasts. Let's just say you'll never think about fat ladies on snowmobiles in quite the same way.

Like Jeff Starzek the peripatetic smuggler, Nicotine Kiss is stripped down, relentless, nimble and just keeps moving. It's the total package, one of the strongest entries in what is, let's face it, the best continuing private eye series in the universe.

So if you need to renew your faith in mysteries, or just novels in general, do what I did - get a Nicotine Kiss.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Walker will remind you of Travis McGee, July 12, 2006

By 

Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Mysteries) (Hardcover)

NICOTINE KISS is one of those mysteries where the lead character, Amos Walker in this case, is much more interesting than the plot. I have read only one other Amos Walker mystery, but so far he reminds me a great deal of Travis McGee. There's the wise guy repartee, the self-deprecating humor, and the penchant for getting beat up or shot. Walker is shot at least twice in NICOTINE KISS, and he's gimpy for most of it.

The second thing that I found impressive was the honor among thieves theme. Jeff Starzek, a cigarette smuggler, saves Walker's life, after Walker is shot the first time. Because of this Walker refuses to believe a Homeland Security agent when he accuses Swarzek of counterfeiting. Swarzek's adoptive sister hires Walker to find him when Swarzek goes missing. In the process we learn that Michigan has more coastline than California.

There's also lots of atmosphere in NICOTINE KISS. Estleman uses cold weather to good effect. Of course, Walker is never properly dressed for sub-zero weather. Starzek and Walker also drive souped-up cars, Walker a Cutless with a 455 engine, Starzek a Hurst Olds. At one point Starzek says it's not the money in reference to his smuggling, it's the driving. He's a modern moon-shine runner. Starzek also plays the piano, everything from Rachmaninoff to jazz, when he's not running from Homeland Security and other coppers.

Here's the kind of insouciance you get from Walker. As he's tracking Swarzek, he stops at a sort of truck stop/ bar called the Air Horn. The denizens are watching televison. "A row of exposed butt cracks seated at the bar were watching DEUL on video and rooting for the truck." You get this kind of irreverence on every other page.

There's a blurb on the back cover from the great John D. MacDonald: "A gem. Estleman goes on the very short list of the peer group I can read for pleasure." This was for SUGARTOWN, a previous Walker mystery. I'll be ordering that one soon.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NICOTINE KISS, June 12, 2006

By 

Michele Maiwald "Mystery Lover" (APPLE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nicotine Kiss: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I read all of the Amos Walkers books by Loren Estleman and I have never been disappointed. Thou Amos is aging, ( and he should be) the character is still fresh. Estleman is an author I eagerly wait for the new book. Also read his wife D. Morgan