When Old Midnight Comes Along

Starred review from October 14, 2019
At the start of Edgar-finalist Estleman’s stellar 28th Amos Walker mystery (after 2018’s Black and White Ball), the Detroit PI is retained by Francis X. Lawes, a local government official in charge of insuring procurement integrity, to find out what happened to his PR consultant wife, Paula. After Paula went missing six years earlier, her car was found abandoned in a bad neighborhood. She’s widely believed to have been murdered, but Lawes, who’s looking to remarry, is hoping for conclusive evidence she’s dead. Walker learns that the police inquiry into the disappearance was handled by an old friend of his, John Alderdyce, who recently retired from the force. Alderdyce always believed that Lawes was behind his wife’s murder, but he was never able to prove it. The plot thickens when Walker learns that the first police officer to find Paula’s vehicle was gunned down soon afterward. Chandler and Hammett fans will feel right at home on the mean streets of Estleman’s Detroit. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary.

November 1, 2019
Amos Walker looks under every rock in greater Detroit to locate a woman missing for six years. If he waited just one more year, Grosse Pointe contractor liaison Francis X. Lawes could have his wife, a PR consultant, declared dead and collect on her million-dollar insurance policy with no fuss. But X doesn't want to wait a year: He wants to marry Holly Pride, office manager at The Lawes Group, the moment he legally can. So Walker reluctantly agrees to look for Paula Lawes, whose car was found abandoned in a rough neighborhood a world away from her moneyed suburb, knowing full well that there's no bonus for finding her alive. He talks to her clients George Hoyle, an audiobook producer who admits to having been her lover, and Andrea Dawson, a spokesmodel with a secret of her own. He crosses words with Oakes Steadman, a former gang leader who parlayed his arrest into a position as a police consultant on youth violence; with Inspector John Alderdyce, the head of the original investigation who retired to work with the Reliance private-investigation agency, a rival of Walker's; and with Albert White, a commander from the Allen Park police station who retired into a more definitive haze of alcoholic apathy. He gets framed for murder and nearly murdered himself before he's rescued by an unlikely savior. And somehow, after the dust has cleared, he's come up with a solution as logical as it is unexpected. Estleman could crank these out in his sleep. Come for the snappy patter, stay for the surprises.

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December 1, 2019
Francis X. Lawes is rich, but he's also bogged down in debt. His wife, Paula, disappeared about six years ago. Now Lawes wants to remarry without waiting an extra year before Paula can be declared legally dead. So he hires PI Amos Walker to find her, dead or alive. Walker wants to know who's in a rush, Lawes or his fianc�e? Lawes won't say; Walker then assumes it's the woman. Why would Lawes, the prime suspect six years ago, risk reopening the case? Could it be that million-dollar insurance policy? Using his connections with the Detroit Police Department, Walker accesses the original files and finds that the police sweated Lawes hard, but it didn't help their case when the first officer on the scene was killed, and his notes on the Lawes case disappeared. Estleman is the author of more than 70 novels in multiple genres and has four Shamus Awards on his mantel. Walker is the quintessential hard-boiled PI, a contemporary throwback to Philip Marlowe. He's tough, he has a code of honor, and he even smokes. A very good entry in an outstanding body of work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019

From the winner of four Shamus Awards (plus multiple awards in other genres), here's the next Amos Walker mystery, with Amos hired by Detroit bigwig Francis X. Lawes to prove that his wife, Paula, is dead. It's been more than six years since she vanished under mysterious circumstances, and Francis doesn't want to wait the full seven years required by law before remarrying. But Francis remains the main suspect in Paula's disappearance, and the officer first on the scene was subsequently killed in the line of duty, his notes on the case scattered to the four winds. So Amos faces a real dilemma.

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