Loren D Estleman - Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

Published by

TYRUS BOOKS

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4700 East Galbraith Road

Cincinnati, Ohio 45236

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Copyright 2010 by Loren D. Estleman

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction.

Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-3100-5

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3100-2

This work has been previously published in print format under the following ISBN:

978-1-935562-24-5

All stories Loren D. Estleman

Greektown was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1983

Robbers Roost was first published in Mystery Magazine, 1982

Fast Burn was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1983

Dead Soldier was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1982

Eight Mile & Dequindre was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1985

Im in the Book was first published in The Mean Streets, Mysterious Press, 1986

Bodyguards Shoot Second was first published in A Matter of Crime, 1987

The Prettiest Dead Girl in Detroit was first published in The Eyes Have It, Mysterious Press, 1985

Blond and Blue was first published in New Black Mask, 1985

Bloody July was first published in New Black Mask, 1985

(The above stories were collected in General Murders, Houghton Mifflin, 1988, Loren D. Estleman)

The Anniversary Waltz was first published in The Mysterious Press Anniversary, Mysterious Press, 2001

Needle was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 2007

Cigarette Stop was first published in Justice for Hire, Mysterious Press, 1990

Deadly Force was first published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 1992

People Who Kill was first published in People Who Kill, Pulphouse, 1986

Pickups and Shotguns was first published in Homicide Host Presents, Write Way, 1996

The Crooked Way was first published in A Matter of Crime, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988

Redneck (as Double Whammy) was first published in Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, 1998

Dogs was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1987

Safe House was first published in Deadly Allies, Doubleday, 1992

Kill the Cat was first published in Detroit Noir, Akashic Books, 2007

Slipstream was first published in Deadly Allies II, Doubleday, 1994

Lady on Ice was first published in A Dark and Sultry Night for Crime, Berkley, 2003

Snow Angels was first published in Invitation to Murder, Dark Harvest, 1991

Major Crimes was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1986

Square One was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 2006

The Man Who Loved Noir was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 1991

Sunday was first published in For Crime Out Loud, Durkin Hayes Audio, 1995

Necessary Evil was first published in The Shamus Game, Signet, 2000

Trust Me was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 2006

The Woodward Plan was first published in Mystery Street, Signet, 1993

Rumble Strip was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, 2009

Sometimes a Hyena 2010

I hesitated over that title. The machinery falters whenever I refer to him as Amos. After thirty years were still not on a first-name basis.

To get close is to intrude. Yes, he tells his stories in first person, probably over a glass of cheap scotch with some new injury keeping pace with the beating of his heart; but he draws the shade just short of the reveal, preferring to test his theory in practice. As he says somewhere, I hate being wrong in front of witnesses.

I doubt I could describe Walker physically in the amount of detail youd need to pick him out of a crowd, although Id know him at a hundred paces. I never took the time to provide more than a few Impressionistic strokes to keep the reader from supplying his own image. Since Walkers the one telling the story, its unlikely hell be confused with any other characters. I bring this up to warn other writers away from describing their protagonists in mirrors, which apart from being a clanking clich just slows down the action.

But others have written at length about Walker, flaying him open like a medical cadaver and weighing his brain, which lists heavily toward the centers of irony. Ive held the scalpel a number of times myself, but the more I do that the more I watch myself work later, being careful to make Walker behave as represented instead of letting him go about his business with me stumbling along behind, the way Ive done from the beginning. Id rather write him than write about him. Its his longevity I want to discuss.

When Motor City Blue appeared in 1980, there was no Internet. There were no cell phones, no cordless phones of any kind. There was only one telephone company. The broadcast networks ruled television. Pee Wee Herman was a major star. Videocassette recorders were new on the market, priced far outside the budgets of most Americans: If you missed a movie on its first release, you waited ten years for it to appear on TV, edited to pablum to avoid violating FCC regulations and cut up to sell beer and automobiles, and if two programs you wanted to see aired in the same time slot, you had to pick one and wait for the summer rerun season to see the other instead of recording one to watch at your own convenience. (Reality shows would not crowd out repeat broadcasting for another twenty years.) The Berlin Wall was observing its twentieth anniversary. The USSR had just begun the invasion of Afghanistan that would bring the Soviet empire down in ruins by the end of the decade. DNA was a mystery waiting to be unlocked.

Its a different world, to be sure, but in many ways little has changed. There is fighting again in Afghanistan, but the USA is leading it, and finding the place as difficult to bring to heel as the Russians did. Iran is still a threat, and peace in the Middle East remains as elusive as when Lawrence of Arabia was campaigning in Egypt. And Amos Walker is still sitting in his third-floor walk-up office on Grand River Avenue in Detroit, contributing to the nicotine smudge on the ceiling above his desk when he isnt out exposing the back of his head to some handy bludgeon on some troublesome errand.

Private eye fictiona mainstay of the American mystery since 1920was all but dead when I wrote Motor City Blue. Ross Macdonald was ailing and would write no more Lew Archers. Mickey Spillane was doing commercials for Michelob. Arthur Lyons and Robert B. Parker were just getting started and were flying well below the radar. The entire suspense genre was considered to be in decline, held above water only by the espionage thrillers of Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett. Romance novels were nudging everything else off the racks. Its hard to imagine a more inopportune moment to begin a series about a postmodern knight errant slaying his ogres one at a time armed with nothing but a revolver and a laminated license. But I was stubborn; which as well see has always been my most reliable weapon of small destruction. Id written westerns, Id leapt aboard the bandwagon of Sherlock Holmes pastiches that proliferated after the success of Nicholas Meyers