Don't Look for Me

March 29, 1993
The menacing darkness that lurked at the edges of Pullman's trilogy of Victorian-era thrillers ( The Ruby in the Smoke et al.) comes to the fore in this contemporary tale of shattered innocence and betrayed love set in Oxford, England. From the first line--``Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June''--the sense of imminent evil and inexorable doom builds unrelentingly to the novel's violent, gutwrenching climax. Naive and well-intentioned, 17-year-old Chris has love, not murder, on his mind when he meets and later beds Jenny (described in lyric and intimate detail), who has run away from her abusive father. Indeed, it is precisely Chris's trusting nature and sense of justice that cause the youth to be duped by a vengeful felon into causing Jenny's death--and only then because she is mistaken for someone else. Here is a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy, with star-crossed lovers separated by fate, a terrifyingly philosophical villain and assorted innocents, cads and buffoons. Its evocative narrative and throat-tightening suspense make this novel a compelling read; however, the graphic sex, moral ambiguity and somber ending make it most suitable for mature YA readers. Ages 12-up.

February 15, 2014
Amos Walker, Detroit's premier missing persons specialist, finds virtually everything but the person he's been hired to look for. This isn't the first time Cecelia Wynn's run out on her investment banker husband, Alec. Last time, though, she left a trail even Hansel and Gretel could have followed. It led to Lloyd Debner, an apprentice at her husband's firm, and it ended when Alec persuaded her to come back home and fired Debner, who was eagerly snatched up by another firm. Now Cecelia's been a little more emphatic, leaving behind a note saying simply, "Don't look for me." So Alec hires Walker to do the looking. In accord with Cecelia's note, she hasn't made herself easy to find. The only leads are Ann Foster, the housekeeper Cecelia abruptly fired five weeks ago, and Elysian Fields, the drug company that sold the herbal supplements she dosed herself with religiously. Walker doesn't find Cecelia at either Elysian Fields or with Ann Foster, but as he continues his investigation, he does find a murdered pot-grower, a come-hither clerk named Smoke, an international drug trafficking operation and Walker's old nemesis, Charlotte Sing, who is wanted in every country that has a police force. Estleman (Burning Midnight, 2012, etc.) piles on the complications so generously--a highlight is marijuana growing used as a cover for more serious drugs--that every reader without a GPS will get lost long before Walker reports back to his client in a shivery final scene. The author supplies the customary pleasures of Walker's snappy dialogue and cold-eyed view of his hometown, but neither Walker's current case nor the case he stumbles into reaches a satisfying conclusion, and the return of his female Fu Manchu is more tiresome than menacing. Below average for this exemplary series.

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March 15, 2014
Detroit financier Alec Wynn's wife has left him and then disappeared, and Wynn wants private investigator Amos Walker to find her, despite a note reading, Don't look for me. Cecelia is a gold digger who has lived the life of the idle rich. Liquid lunches with her pals and assorted artsy hobbies have kept her out of Hubby's bed most nights. Too tired, you know? Walker quickly determines that Cecelia had fired her latest maid and that she was currently into herbal remedies. Walker and the clerk at the herbal emporium hit it off, despite the dead body in the store basement. Moving along, Walker finds the former maid working at a porn studio, and where there's porn, there's Mob. There are also two Mossad agents who turn up dead. A direct descendant of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Walker fires up a cig, has a sip of Scotch, and ponders how the case of a disappeared wife can get this complicated. Like Spade and Marlowe, he views a dishonest world with a cynical eyeand is still disappointed. A very good entry in a solid series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2013

In his 23rd outing, PI Amos Walker decides not to ignore a note from a missing woman that says, "Don't look for me," and soon finds himself mulling over Mafia or porn connections after discovering a corpse in store basement.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2014

The winner of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America isn't resting on his laurels. Estleman's PI sees a familiar enemy (Charlotte Sing) aiming for him in the concluding title in a trilogy (American Detective and Infernal Angels) within the long-running series that began in 1980 with Motor City Blue. The Walker series now stands at number 24. [See Prepub Alert, 9/16/13.]

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 20, 2014
In Estleman’s suspenseful, no-frills 23rd Amos Walker novel (after 2012’s Burning Midnight), investment banker Alec Wynn asks the cynical Detroit private detective to find his missing wife, Cecelia, who disappeared, leaving behind a note simply stating, “Don’t look for me.” Walker starts with Wynn’s ex-apprentice, who had an affair with Cecelia, but gets nowhere with him. With few leads, the detective tracks down the herbal remedies store that supplied Cecelia with a cabinet-full of pills, to see if anyone there has any idea of her whereabouts. The search has some unexpected twists, though readers of the genre won’t be surprised when the case turns violent. Estleman has few peers when it comes to giving his world-weary PI downbeat Chandleresque lines (“I thought I heard a bird singing, but it turned out to be a sanitation truck backing up in the next block”), which complement a lean but engrossing plot and a plausibly human lead. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.