After a break in my Amos Walker reading–a break far longer than anyone should be comfortable with–Sinister Heights was a great episode in the case files of the first private detective I know of capable of diagraming sentences while getting his head bounced off walls by union lackeys and illegitimate children alike to pick up with.

Walker is old school and has the cheap Scotch and quick, sarcastic comebacks to prove it; but the work that comes by a private detective as the Motor City crawls into the 21st century is dwindling.  If it wasn’t for the sins and vicious legacies of men like Leland Stutch, who built the automotive industry, he might be out of work altogether.

This may be Loren Estleman’s fifteenth Amos Walker book, and while he may be bringing back old characters (and killing off new and old ones alike) his love of Detroit, Walker’s sarcasm, and the gritty, no-nonsense rendering of a flawed world and its struggling inhabitants, are as strong as ever.

If you’re a fan of hardboiled mysteries, smart-assed private detectives or stories set in the Rust Belt, go back and take a look at Motor City Blue, the first of Estleman’s Amos Walker series.  I wasn’t so sure when I bought that first book from Motor City Books, but before I even finished it I had gone back to buy the next three in the series…

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