Customer Reviews

Retro: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Series)

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I've become a fan of Loren Estleman. Whether he's writing of the Old West or contmporary Detroit, the man is simply an extraordinary storyteller.

Amos Walker, former homicide detective and now struggling private investigator is asked to locate the long-ago runaway son of a local madam, so he can deliver her ashes to him.

What begins as an oddball assignment turns into something far more when the son is murdered in his hotel room near the Detroit airport. Walker becomes a prime suspect.

From that point on, Walker walks through past and present on a quest to find the real murderer - and solve a murder from decades past.

There's a marvelous grittiness to Estleman's writing. His characters feel real, the plot twists and turns with not a few sub-plots to keep you guessing. And the ending leaves you wanting more Estleman. He's that good.

Jerry

A simple assignment--delivering a dead madam's ashes to her adoptive son--turns out complicated and dangerous as private investigator Amos Walker investigates. The son, a Viet Nam era fugitive, is surprisingly easy to track down, especially when Walker calls on a retired FBI former client. But, ashes delivered, the son has an idea that he'd like to hire Amos to track down his father's killer--a murder that happened decades earlier, in an era when black fighters were definitely not supposed to date white entertainers.

When Walker's new client is killed in an airport hotel--a hotel behind all of the screening devices of modern anti-terrorism, Amos knows that the past has re-emerged. Especially since Walker was set up as a suspect.

Walker mixes with a tough county police Captain, his retired FBI buddy, a couple of gangsters in town for what looks like a setup, the gangster's beautiful girlfriend who looks to Walker for help escaping, and the aging witnesses to the long-ago shooting. Whether in style, gangsters, or murder, everything old is new again--and Walker has to move quickly to stay alive himself.

Author Loren D. Estleman delivers an exciting hard-boiled mystery. Walker, with his stuborn commitment to finding the truth no matter who gets in his way, is a classic retro figure himself. Interesting dialogue, fascinating introspection, Walker's cynical but true observations on life, and high suspense and danger, along with Estleman's compelling writing, make RETRO a fast-paced and hard-to-put-down novel. If you like hard-boiled private detective thrillers, RETRO is definitely one you should check out.

There was a time when I was a steady mystery reader. Those days are long gone-I sort of burned out on the genre-but I still take in the occasional mystery. Mostly Spenser novels, but I'll throw in another author every now and then.

However, back when I was a mystery junkie, Amos Walker was one of my favorite reads. Loren D. Estleman is a first rate writer in the noir tradition. He's equally adept at both plot development as well as characterization. Although Estleman has a few different characters he deals with, Amos Walker is his masterpiece. Walker is a gritty, hardboiled former Viet Nam vet now working the detective trade in Detroit.

Estleman paints the fringes of Detroit with a master painters brush and Walker is right at home in that gritty urban landscape.

In retro Walker is present at the bedside of an old acquaintance, a madam and self described "former mob moll", who asks Amos, as a dying wish, to see to it that her cremains get back to her long lost son. Walker agrees and has no problem tracking down the son-he's a former draft deserter still living in Canada. He presents him with his mother's cremains and departs, only to learn shortly thereafter that the son has been shot dead and Walker is considered a suspect. Walker determines he has to straighten things out, if only to clear himself, and thus he enters the web of deception and murder.

As with all Walker books, there is lots of action. The characters are well written and very memorable. Walker's hard charging, straight ahead, no nonsense approach is in full display. The plot is fascinating, as usual. This is another grand page turner in a long line of grand page turner's.

In fact, I so enjoyed this one that I'm going to have to go back and revisit Walker for a while. I'm sure there have been several entries in the series since my burn out a while back. I may have burned out-I'm glad Estleman didn't!

I am annoyed as all get out. This kind of stuff has got to stop. Amos Walker gets a rather routine assignment, finding a lost son for delivery of his mother's ashes. Soon we hear about the murder of a boxer many years earlier, and somehow it ties into yet a new murder today.

What annoys me are the coincidences that occur in the plot. I don't want to mention them, that gives it all away. But just what are the chances that something could work out the way this mystery does? One in a hundred million maybe?

The author is not playing fair here. He sets up something that could only work if somehow the universe was run by a clown who rules with coincidences that are just too great to swallow. If you want a story that actually could happen, if want a story in which the author is not just pulling things together to keep the suspense going, if you want a mystery that actually could be solved without guidance from heaven; this story is not for you. Or me either, for that matter.

Once again, i find myself saying that each new Amos Walker novel is the best one yet. I simply cannot understand why estleman is ignored by the "mainstream" mystery audience nor why he isn't regularly on the NY Times best seller list. He is my very favorite in this genre and that's saying a great deal, as i read every agatha christie by age 14, love patricia wentworth, dorothy simpson, ross macdonald, john D macdonald, michael connelly, eliz george....know basically all the authors carolyn hart mentions in her books. i just read a review of another book where the auther was compared to chandler and i keep wondering why said author isn't compared to loren estleman/amos walker. Loren Estleman is THE true heir to raymond chandler. My mother loves reading amos' one liners to my father. I can't wait til the next amos walker comes out. There simply aren't enough superlatives. The plot in this stretches way back into the past, similar to many ross macdonald books. which is just fine.

How appropriate to have a thriller based in Detroit read by a Detroiter! Veteran voice performer Mel Foster can summon many voices yet in this reading he returns to his roots. He sounds just like a Michigander, and a tough one at that.

Estleman's creation, Detroit detective Amos Walker, can handle almost any situation. He's seen a lot in that city pierced by Belle Isle and rimmed by the upscale Grosse Pointes. Yet, he's not at all prepared for what's in store for him following the death of Beryl Garnet.

Beryl was really something before she went to the great beyond. She was a madam who would make the contemporary Heidis seem inept. She enjoyed a lengthy tenure in the Motor City and made a small fortune.

However, the lady has one last wish: she wants Walker to deliver her ashes to the son she hasn't seen in a number of years. Her plea is that she wants her son to know that he's always been in her heart.

Well, Walker does have a soft side, so he goes in search of Beryl's offspring. The young man is soon located in Canada; he's a draft dodger. He need dodge no longer because shortly after Walker finds him Beryl's son joins his mom in the heavenly kingdom.

Of course, Walker is a prime suspect in this murder. Obviously, Walker has to find the real killer in order to clear himself. For this smart Detroit detective that doesn't sound like much of a challenge - until he discovers one more killing. This time the victim is the father of Beryl's son. Now, mother, father, and son are perhaps traipsing about the clouds. But, it's not at all heavenly for Walker here on Earth.

- Gail Cooke

I'm a huge Loren Estleman fan and particularly love the Amos Walker series. While I'm tempted to give this lower than 4 stars, I can't because in spite of its flaws it's still a good read. Walker is probably one of the most enjoyable hardboiled PI characters there have been and Estleman is a great writer. The major flaw with this book is that the "whodunit" isn't a mystery. It's fairly clear early on, the only mystery is the why, and that's not terribly fascinating. I recommend reading any of the other Walker mysteries first. You should be invested in the series before picking this one up.

Loren Estleman is one of the grand old men of mystery writing, right up alongside Lawrence Block these days. Estleman, as far as I know, rarely makes the bestseller lists (Block's finally broken through) but among detective novel fans he's one of the best-known writers of his generation, turning out novel after novel in a series that is one of the best and longest-running in the genre. Amos Walker is a wonderful creation, a tough guy who's physically not that imposing, a wisecracking detective who's not above bending a law or two, an investigator who's pretty quick on the uptake but not quite as smart as he should be.

In the current entry (the 17th) Walker's hired by an elderly woman who used to run one of Detroit's whorehouses. She's dying, and she wants her only son to have her ashes when she's cremated. She duly passes, and Walker finds the son hiding in Canada to avoid prosecution for indiscretions he committed when a young man in the 60s, that involved bombs and the deaths of his two co-conspirators. When Walker delivers the ashes, the son decides to hire him to find out who killed the son's father, a flashy black boxer from the late '40s, and soon after is killed by someone under circumstances that lead everyone to believe it's somehow connected to the death of dear old dad.

From there the plot goes on, with mobsters, a moll, an upright cop and a decent and polite Canadian private eye, a bitter old mother, and an aging newspaper reporter. Estleman keeps the plot skimming along wonderfully, and the solution, while logical, isn't obvious (at least it wasn't to me) regardless of what anyone else says. I enjoyed this book and I'd recommend it to most anyone: it's a very good murder mystery.