A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (The Amos Walker Series #15) [Hardcover]

Loren D. Estleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2000

"I thought I'd never see her again. But never is longer than forever." She is book editor Louise Starr, a beautiful and scheming ghost from Amos Walker's past; and she wants the Detroit private eye to find a missing paperback writer from the 1950s and ask him why he turned down his first book contract in 40 years. "You're perfect for this job," Louise says. "You're the kind of detective Booth wrote about; the kind they say doesn't exist in real life. Eugene Booth's trail leads to a rustic motel cabin, where the crusty old pro is hammering out his first novel for decades on a battered Smith Corona with a case of bourbon for inspiration. But when the writer winds up hanging from his own belt, Walker must discover the connection between the apparent suicide, the murder of Booth's wife 40 years before - and a deadly secret as old as World War II.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amos Walker has a sharp eye and a sharper sense of the absurd. Pair these with a dry wit and a fondness for Scotch and you've got Detroit's answer to Philip Marlowe. Just trade the fedora for a Tigers' baseball cap. Loren Estleman's acerbically philosophical PI has been going strong for 13 novels and shows no sign of slowing down. In a funky, meta-textual noir riff, A Smile on the Face of the Tiger immerses Walker in the world of '40s and '50s American pulp fiction, where men clench lantern jaws and women (sorry, dames) wear silk stockings and cause trouble.

When a New York publisher asks Walker to track down author Eugene Booth, who's refusing to allow his classic Paradise Valley to be reissued, Walker's first instinct is to say no. But Booth's novel, about a Detroit race riot in 1943, fascinates Walker, especially after he finds Booth's dictation tapes. Booth has "a low fuzzy bass that might once have been rich and pleasant before too much whiskey, too many cigarettes, and three or more trips too many around a rundown block had hammered it into that dull monotone you hear at last call and over the loudspeaker in the eleventh inning of a pitchers' duel." Walker discovers that it's not just whiskey and cigarettes that have affected the author. His wife was murdered 50 years ago to prevent Booth from spilling the truth about the events he fictionalized.

Walker traces Booth to a rundown motel on the shores of Lake Huron. His presence there is no surprise, given his fondness for solitude and fish. But why is mobster Glad Eddie Cypress, who should be gearing up for a big book tour, holed up at the same motel? When Walker finds Booth swinging from the rafters, he decides to find out. When the number of people who wanted Booth dead starts multiplying, and a 50-year-old race riot and murder move back into the spotlight, Walker is hard-pressed to keep himself from becoming history.

Estleman's sardonic prose (the Detroit River is "the only spot on the North American continent where you could look across at a foreign country without seeing either wilderness or tattoo parlors") makes A Smile on the Face of the Tiger move energetically along. This noir veteran, never content to rest on his laurels, has produced another gritty winner. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

HThe three Shamus Awards Estleman has won for his Amos Walker mysteries (The Hours of the Virgin, etc.) testify to his reputation as the torchbearer of the classic PI yarn. In his 14th novel about the tough-minded Detroit gumshoe, Estleman pays explicit tribute to his artistic ancestors, dedicating the book to "Hamilton, Prather, McCoy, and Spillane" and others, and centering its complicated, absorbing plot around the fates of a classic paperback writer and the bombshell blonde who posed for his books' lurid covers. Walker is hired by sleek Louise Starr, owner of a nascent New York publishing house, to find Eugene Booth, author of such titles as Tough Town and Bullets Are My Business. Booth has called it quits on a contract to reprint his best-known novel, Paradise Valley, set within the horrific Detroit race riot of June 1943; Starr wants to know why. Walker locates Booth, a broken old drunk tapping at a manual typewriter, at a fishing lodge north of Motor City. They drink and they talkDabout the murder of Booth's wife way back when and about what really went down at the riot; hours later, Walker finds Booth hanged in his cabin. Suicide? Then how to explain the "heeled" guy in an adjacent cabin, who Walker soon learns is hit man-turned-bestselling author Glad Eddie Cypress? Fleta Skirrett, former paperback jacket honey, now waiting to die in an old folks' home, offers some clues, and so does the son of the painter of Booth's covers, who lives surrounded by plastic-wrapped paperbacks. A good, involving mystery featuring strong characters and prose as smooth as the brim of a fedora, this novel makes smart points about writing, publishing and the cult of mysteries. Anyone who appreciates the difference between a gat and a gun, a gam and a leg, is going to wolf it down. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press; First Edition edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892967064
• ISBN-13: 978-0892967063
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,078,582 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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 15 Novels Later, Amos Walker STILL Rocks, November 5, 2001

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (The Amos Walker Series #15) (Hardcover)

Most mystery series have become either worn out or routine by the time they get around to their 15th outing. Not so Loren Estlemen's Amos Walker P.I. series. If anything, Estlemen and his hero are getting better. "A Smile of the Face of the Tiger" is the fourth Walker book since Estlemen took a seven year hiatus from his favorite shamus, and it is easily the best of the "comeback" novels. Walker remains one of the few who truly does carry on the torch of Phillip Marlowe with his lonliness, cynicism and uncorruptible nature.

This time out, he tracks a old pulp fiction writer who has disappeared after turning down an advance to reprint one of his old novels. I've seen this story line several times before, but Estlemen gets clever with it. Along the way, he weaves in his usual menacing mobster (a Sammy "the Bull" Gravano clone, no less) and corrupt police officer angles, also in a fresh and unique way. It also helps that Estlemen puts two of the series's better supporting characters, police Lieutenant Mary Ann Thaler and beguiling publisher's representative Louise Starr, to good use this time out. As always, the real hero of the story is the once great city of Detroit, still struggling to regain some of its lost luster, this time with casino gambling.

Overall, Walker is among the best private detectives in the literary world today, and this is one of his best novels to date.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amos Walker gets into a story within a story, May 12, 2005

By 

Pat Browning "Author of ABSINTHEOF MALICE" (Yukon, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (The Amos Walker Series #15) (Hardcover)

I picked up this book because of the title. I opened it and read:

"Bang! Bang!Bang! Bang!
Four shots ripped into my groin, and I was off on the biggest adventure of my life.
But first let me tell you a little about myself.
--Max Shulman, Sleep Till Noon (1950)"

Estleman can't top that, I thought, and then I read his opening lines:
"I thought I'd never see her again. But never is longer than forever."
And I was off on another adventure with one of my favorite PIs, Amos Walker. Estleman's writing flows, with seldom a sour note or wrong or useless word.

Amos is hired to locate a writer who returned his advance and dropped out of sight. The publisher is a handsome blonde named Louise who has started her own company, and the author, Eugene Booth, hasn't written a word in 40 years, but is back in style.

Louise explains: "He's part of that whole tailfins-Rat Pack-lounge lizard-swingers revival ... The contract was to reprint Paradise Valley, his best-known novel, with an option on three others if he sold through."

Finding Booth is no problem for Amos, but the trail leads back to a 1943 race riot and three lynchings, two cops caught in the middle of it, a moldering web of lies and coverups, and Glad Eddie, a nasty hit man who has written his memoirs.

I don't know where Estleman finds his characters, but Eugene Booth and his friend, Fleta Skerritt, are worth the price of admission. Fleta's mind comes and goes, but in her dreams she's still the blonde in the red slip on all those lurid paperback covers of the 1950s. Eugene is an old coot with no illusions and one desire: to rewrite "Paradise Valley" the way the story really happened.

I hated to close the book on Eugene Booth, but at least Amos is still around. If Estleman keeps writing them, I'll never run out of Amos Walker books.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent storyline, July 28, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (The Amos Walker Series #15) (Hardcover)

New York publisher Louise Starr hires Detroit's private investigator Amos Walker to locate writer Eugene Booth, author of the half a century old classic "Paradise Valley." Louise wants the rights to reprint the novel. However, Booth has simply vanished.

While Amos goes about his missing person inquiries, he learns that former Mafia hitman turned author Glad Eddie also seeks Booth. When he finds Booth, Amos learns that the recluse plans to write a non-fictionalized account of the city's 1943 riots. The next day Booth is dead, an apparent suicide. Amos begins investigating the death of Booth and the murder of the writer's wife over fifty years ago, not yet understanding the danger he faces.

SMILE ON THE FACE OF THE TIGER, the fourteenth Amos Walker mystery novel, retains the noir feel of its predecessors. The book pays homage to the pulp fiction of the thirties and forties and to Detroit. The story line is captivating, and the who-done-it is fun but clearly this tale belongs to Amos, a fresh intriguing character who constantly take beatings. Loren D. Estleman continually shows his ability to write delightful contemporary noir.

Harriet Klausner