Customer Reviews

Poison Blonde: An Amos Walker Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a huge fan of the Amos Walker private eye series, I am happy to report that "Poison Blonde" is a return to form after the previous book in the series "Sinister Heights" had been something of a letdown. At his best, author Loren Estleman is an elite hardboiled mystery writer. Since its first appearance with 1980's "Motor City Blue" the Walker series has been rivalled only by Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series in term of quality hardboiled private eye writing.

This time out, Walker is hired by a susperstar female Latin singer with a very dark and sordid past. A onetime revolutionary in her home country, she fled to the U.S. under an assumed identity after being accused of murder. When the person whose identity she assumed turns up missing after blackmailing her, she hires Walker to find the blackmailer before her secret becomes public.

The plot draws Walker into web of intrigue, pitting him against his usual assortment of gangsters, cops and other assorted heavies. Though "Poison Blonde" breaks no new ground for the series, it is delivered with such fresh and inventive prose that it is a more than worthwhile read. Fans of hardboiled mysery novels owe it to themselves to get hooked on Amos.

At his best, Loren D. Estleman reminds me of Raymond Chandler. At his weakest, his characters are engaging and rewarding. So even if you are not an Estleman fan, I suspect that you will enjoy Poison Blonde.

Poison Blonde belongs to Mr. Estleman's distinguished series featuring private detective, Amos Walker, who haunts the night in Detroit. His work is his life, and vice versa.

Poison Blonde brings him a job working for a hot young recording star, Ms. Gilia Cristobal. The young woman is not whom she seems, and the many ex-cons around her bring Walker onto his guard. One of them is a man he helped put away for life. The music industry scenes ring true, and could have come out of a tabloid. The Detroit color is, as always, solid and striking. The thugs are as stupid and gratuitously cruel as anyone would want.

The character of Gloria Cristobal is a particularly interesting one, and adds a lot to the story. She is one of Mr. Estleman's best characters in years.

The story is fast-paced and engrossing, and I found myself unable to put the book down until I had finished it.

Why did I grade the story down one star? There are mysteries here, but their explanations are the obvious ones that would occur to any reader in the first few seconds. Mr. Estleman does a pretty good job of making them seem more mysterious than they are by putting in lots of color, but at bottom there's not much here to exercise your mental processes.

After you finish enjoying this book, I suggest that you take the time to get to know someone better whom you think you know. Look for the depths behind the obvious social facade. Take what you find and use it to look deeper into the hearts of all those you meet.

When a beautiful singer asks private investigator Amos Walker to find evidence that her wardrobe manager sold her out, Walker takes the job--and isn't happy to find that it was only a test. Gilia Cristobal was being blackmailed--and the blackmailer has vanished. A vanished blackmailer might be good news, or it might be the worst possible news and Gilia needs to know. Because the blackmail is about illegal immigration, subversive activities, and murder. Walker is suspicious--not least because Gilia's manager is Hector Matador, a Columbian mobster and killer. Still, a job is a job and he is intrigued by the beautiful blonde and her story.

Author Loren D. Estleman is a master of dark mystery. The winter of Detroit, Walker's outdated tough-guy image in a changing world, and Walker's curious blend of cynicism and hope all involve the reader in the story. Estleman's compelling and powerful writing adds to the emotional charge of the story--with enough witty passages and throw-away dialogue to break up the tension and emotional darkness in the story.

Amos Walker makes a wonderful damaged detective--and Estleman plays him straight, with no cheating, no avoiding the pain, and no faked heroism.

Fans of the Amos Walker fan will add POISON BLONDE to their must-read list. Those new to Estleman or Walker have a treat to look forward to.

I was given "Poison Blonde" by a friend who is a big fan of the author and his work. I have an interest In Robert B Parker's Spenser series and Peter Corris's Cliff Hardy so Amos Walker should be part of a natural progression.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that Estleman's creation, Amos Walker, lived up to some of the hype. I found "Poison Blonde" to be confusing to the point of losing interest. The narrative itself tries too hard to be of a crime genre. In fact, the narrative lapses to clichés regularly. Quite quickly, the clichés tire.

Could I recommend the adventures of Amos Walker? Simply, the answer is "no". My friend will be disappointed but each to his own poison.

I was surprised to see that this author has written over fifty books, including the Amos Walker series and Westerns. This was the first book I've read by Mr. Estleman but will not be the last.

Amos Walker is a private investigator with an attitude. He lives by himself in a rundown house, drives a rattletrap of a car, is single, and does not have an ongoing relationship with anyone. He seems to have more enemies than friends. Along comes Latina singer Gilia Cristobel to involve him in trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her extortionist. From that evolves another mystery, who killed the woman Gilia is accused of murdering in her native country. I liked the Lincoln Question aspect.

The plot at times lost steam and the overt witticism of the author sometimes got in the way. Good character development, though, and basically a good story.

I liked it to enough to read others in this series.

I was surprised that I had never come across Estleman's work before, given his long list of previous works and my affinity for detective novels. This one wasn't bad, but was brought down by some nagging items I had a hard time getting over.

To start with, Estleman writes internal dialouge like a bad Bogart impression. Everything is a metaphor, or has an adjective attached to it. Some of it is very creative and colorful, but after a while it just gets to be too much to read through. I felt like I was wading through the novel, not reading it.

The second problem I had was the plot: A famous latin pop star (pretty much Christina Aguilera) is about to have her shady past exposed and wants Amos Walker to prevent that. It really just seems kind of weak. Famous people do not go to jail for the type of things that are in her past (avoiding spoilers). This was not a hug problem, but it did kind of irritate me.

Mostly the book was good. Pacing, action and dialouge were all well done. I think it just did fit well with me. OVerall, this is definatly worth a try to see if you like Estleman's style.

This is not the best Amos Walker by any means...very light plot, very apparent killer...but a "lesser" Amos Walker mystery is still miles above the best of most other authors. Buy it...you won't be sorry!

Latino singer Gilia Cristobel is as hot an act as one will find today with her albums at the top of the charts and her popularity at stratospheric levels at least with music lovers. However, the down side of her meteoric rise is that her fame has brought her to the attention of someone who knew her back in the old country in Central America. That individual has blackmailed Gilia claiming he has proof of her involvement in an atrocity back home.

Paying off her extortionist is worth the lost cash to Gilia, but three months pass without further word from the blackmailer. Desperate to end the potential fiasco that if it went public would sink her career permanently, Gilia hires Detroit private investigator Amos Walker to find the real Gilia who has vanished since the threats surfaced and whose identity the singer has paid for so she can remain in the USA.

The latest Amos Walker tale is the usual superb hard-boiled noir that hooks the reader from the very beginning until the finish because the entire cast seems so genuine. Readers believe what Amos becomes entangled in due to the ensemble, whether they make a cameo appearance or are a key secondary player. The story line is vintage Walker who solves one thing only to be engulfed in something larger. Loren D. Estleman delivers another winner as the Motor City sleuth remains at the top of his game investigating on all cylinders.

Harriet Klausner

Loren Estleman and his Detroit private eye Amos Walker are longtime favorites of mine. Like the Nameless Detective series, I've got a history with these books and I look forward to each new one that comes out. For a while there, due to an interesting story in itself, there were no new Amos Walker books for years. But the tough private eye is back with a vengeance these days, and most of those he's not taking any prisoners.

Where Pronzini occupies himself and his character more with the cerebral aspects of detective work, Amos Walker and Estleman prowl on the dark side of the streets in a struggling metropolis filled with broken dreams and sharp-edged lust and desperate murderers. Walker is at home there, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

This novel is different in some ways than the rest of the series. Gilia Cristobal, the client who hires Walker to find out who's blackmailing her, could have stepped right out of an MTV video. Estleman surprised me with how much he knew about the industry and how closely the music business tied in with criminal enterprise. Of course, given much of rap music's headlines in the news, that isn't such a stretch these days.

Gilia was an interesting character and had more depth than I had expected in the book. Her Central American roots provided even more of an exotic flavor to the story, as did the "Lincoln Question." I enjoyed the exposure to that background, and Walker took on a different aspect when dealing with paparazzi and hardcases. Still Walker style, though.

But the thing that struck me most is how Walker/Estleman feels about Detroit. The city is currently on hard times, like much of the United States, but the stand the character and the author take makes that much more touching. Neither of them have given up on Detroit, but the city is never going to be the same again.

The overall mystery is pretty good. Walker has a lot to do while shuffling through clues and trying to stay out of the way of the Matador, a past enemy with bad blood between them. But the best aspect of this novel is the dialogue, the patter Walker keeps up with everyone he deals with. Some of the lines drew an outright chuckle from me as I was turning pages, and others stayed in my mind long after I'd finished the book. I'd figured out who the killer was, but I hadn't seen how everything was going to play out in the final scenes.

Poison Blonde is a great read for fans of the series, and it's not a bad jumping on point for anyone who's never read an Amos Walker novel.

After Sinister Heights you could be forgiven for wondering if this series was in trouble. No worries, Walker is back in this solid entry in the series.

If you like Walker, pick this up. If you haven't read any Walker books, this is as good a place to start as any.