Mini-Reviews: Back In My Day

I just wrapped up two reads that were the literary equivalent of injecting nostalgia directly into my veins and while I had a good time with both of them, I'm not moved enough for full scale reviews which means, yes - it's time for another patented round of Auntie Wendy mini-reviews!

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour is an oral history, featuring interviews from multiple people who were there (musicians, promoters, agents, you name it...), for the music festival that helped kick alternative music and "grunge" into the mainstream. The book covers 1991-1997, when Perry Farrell was heavily involved, with the rebirth of the festival (2003) getting touched on in what serves as an epilogue chunk of chapters.

I never attended the traveling music festival (which is what made it very unique when it launched in 1991) despite being the key demographic for the middle years.  This was a real nostalgic trip for me for my formative late teens / early twenties and a stark reminder of how gross the 1990s could be. This was the era that gave us the notion of the "romantic" heroin addict musician after all, with a fair amount of misogyny tossed in for added flavor.  And don't get me started on the freak show thing - I got feelings y'all. 

Despite all that, I enjoyed this, especially all the behind the scenes stuff.  That first year felt very much like "hey gang, let's put on a show!" and the fact that this band of misfits managed to not only pull it off, but make it a success is a perfect example of stranger than fiction. At turns funny and tragic, a window to a different time - when you could attend a day-long festival for around $30 and see up to nine bands just on the main stage (a second stage was introduced in year 2).  I listened to this on audio and it took a moment to get my sea legs given the oral history format, but really enjoyable from start to finish.

Grade = B

Smoke on the Water by Loren D. Estleman is the 32nd adventure for Detroit private investigator Amos Walker, and look you just can't think too long or hard about these books. The character has aged (a bit) but has largely stayed frozen in time. I mean, the first book in the series debuted in 1980 and even if you put Amos on the young side back then, this guy should now be in his 70s - assuming he'd even be alive (I'm talking a lot of concussions folks, in real life this guy would not still be walking around). 

I read Estleman because he's one of the last guys writing old school gumshoe noir, plus his atmosphere and sense of place is always pitch perfect. This go-around he ups things a notch with a post-pandemic Detroit and smoke blowing across the river from the Canadian wildfires. Honestly, it's great stuff.

Amos is hired by a law firm who need him to track down a case file that's gone missing. It's an important enough file that the lawyer who was in charge of its safe-keeping turns up dead thanks to a hit-and-run, and the bodies continue to drop once Amos, fool that he is, agrees to take the case. 

For Book 32, this stands alone reasonably well, but character development is minimal and certainly the relationships between some of the characters isn't going to be entirely fleshed out for newcomers. At this point I feel like these books are for the fans - which honestly you can say about 99% of all long-running series.

Estleman doesn't write mysteries in the true sense of the word, these are very much crime stories and the plots can sometimes stray into vague or convoluted (which it does here), but it's not why I'm reading these books. Besides being the last of a dying breed, Estleman is what I call "a professional writer." If the book contracts dried up he'd probably write ad copy for breakfast cereal. He's a pro, and I like reading books by pros. They can spin a yarn and turn a phrase. Estleman's added bonus is that he cracks wise and I love the way he writes about Detroit. If there's a next book in this series, I'll be reading it.

Final Grade = B-

Mini-Reviews: Nostalgia Ahoy!

Man, nostalgia. It's a helluva a drug. And when it comes to reading sometimes nostalgia will carry a ho-hum read over the finish line, even if I have a hard time qualifying it as a "recommended read."

First up is In Her Shadow by Kristin Miller, a book I uncovered from the depths of my Kindle. Like a previous book I read by Miller, this is another Privileged People Being Generally Terrible book but where the previous book faltered, this one was mostly a success. It helps that I spent my impressionable teen years cutting my teeth on soap operas and Gothics and this story scratched both of those itches.

Colleen Roper took a secretarial job, working for financial guru Michael Harris. In record time they're sleeping together and bingo-bango she's pregnant. There have been some complications to her pregnancy so the doctor is prescribing plenty of rest and relaxation, which means quitting her job and Michael sweeping her off to palatial family home, Ravenwood. The wrinkle? Michael's pregnant wife, Joanna - who abruptly left Michael very shortly before he fell into Colleen's bed. Oh and minor detail nobody has heard from her since. Colleen, of course, being the typical Gothic heroine has stars in her eyes, newly thrust into a world of luxury, spinning fairy tale happy family fantasies.  In reality?  Michael seems distant from the idea of starting a family, there are locked rooms at Ravenwood that are off limits, and a small staff that are openly hostile to her. Then, of course, a dead body shows up.

This story is told from multiple points of view (Colleen, Michael, a married couple next door with plenty to hide, and the lead detective on the case when the body turns up) and it really works here. Miller plays these shifts to maximum effect to keep the reader guessing, keeping the equilibrium off balance just enough.

The only halfway decent "likeable" person in this book is the lead detective on the case, while everyone else is generally terrible or hopelessly naïve (Colleen grates in short order) but man, nothing will hook me faster than a soapy Gothic.  I had it half-figured out by the end, but it was entertaining all the same.

Final Grade = B-

Kill Zone by Loren D. Estleman is the first in his Peter Macklin series and was first published in 1984, which yes makes it problematic at times, but as someone who grew up in Michigan, man this book was a giant needle of nostalgia injected straight into my eyeballs.

A rag-tag group of eight would-be terrorists who call themselves Siegfried hijack a Boblo boat (!!) soon after it leaves the dock in Detroit. On board is a government bureaucrat's daughter, which leads the FBI to go local Detroit mobster, Michael Boniface, now cooling his heels in prison. In exchange for leniency, Boniface puts his best guy on the job, mob enforcer and hitman, Peter Macklin. What Macklin doesn't know is that the guy running the show while Boniface is behind bars doesn't want to give up his seat and the killer now has his own hitman tracking his every move.

Detroit in the 1980s, crooked cops, the FBI sniffing around, the mob and BOBLO BOATS!  It scratched a very strong regional flavor itch for me even though it doesn't hit nearly the same as Estleman's Amos Walker series.

Here's the thing, there's eleventy billion characters in this book. Eight terrorists, the Boblo boat workers, the passengers, mobsters, Macklin's dysfunctional family, his mistress, his Old School Italian mentor, FBI agents, cops - I just gave up after a while keeping track of who was who and started looking at this story with a cinematic eye. Back in the day Charles Bronson would have starred in this.  These days, they'd rewrite it for a world-weary Ben Affleck. 

It's all a bit absurd and features all the trigger warnings a book published in 1984 would (stereotypes, some racial slurs, the female characters in Macklin's immediate orbit are....well, not great) but books like this scratch a very particular itch of mine, and on that score it kept me amused.  Not sure if I'll continue on with the series because honestly? Amos Walker is where it's at for me.

Final Grade = C+

Mini-Reviews: Dream Factories

I like traveling...once I get where I want to go.  It's the getting there that tends to be annoying, although the one solid benefit I've discovered over the years to getting on an airplane is Airplane Reading.  I am a champ for reading on airplanes and my recent trip back to the American Midwest (work conference) gave me the opportunity to plow through some books.  That means it's time for another round of Wendy's patented mini-reviews.

The Bull Rider's Cowgirl by April Arrington was a completely random pick off my Kindle.  The thought process went something like this "I haven't read a Harlequin American in a while..." Albeit this book was released under the rebranded "Western Romance" banner that Harlequin put out to pasture in 2018.

This is the third book in the Men of Raintree Ranch series and while past characters do show up, it stands alone just fine.  Colt Mead is a bull rider clawing his way up the ranks and the playboy of the circuit.  Jen Taylor is a barrel racer with ambitions as wide as the Grand Canyon, determined to make something of herself and show all those naysayers back home in the nothing small town where she grew up.  She's mightily attracted to Colt, they shared a kiss, and naturally Colt pushed her away - because while's he's attracted to her that's what guys like this always seem to do.  This incident has made Jen prickly around him, until a tragedy brings them together.

Colt's father and stepmother die in an accident leaving him the guardian to his 9-year-old half-sister.  Jen can't say no to a friend, so takes time away from the circuit to help Colt out in his hour of need.  As Colt reconnects with his sister he realizes that his drifter lifestyle traveling the rodeo circuit ain't all it's cracked up to be.

The world-building is solid and it was an interesting spin to have Colt come from a cold fish wealthy family who chucked it all to be his own man (his father is a piece of work, naturally). Jen is extremely relatable, a wrong-side of the tracks kind of girl that everyone wrote off.  She's going to work hard, bust her butt, and show all those jerks back home!  And Arrington, bless her heart, writes the child characters in the book like kids. They read authentic and not like plot moppets.

Here's the problem, it's one of those books where the heroine chucks aside all her dreams once the hero tells her he loves her.  That's not an automatic nope for me, but I have caveats: 1) It has to be the heroine's idea and 2) The hero damn sure better recognize exactly what the heroine is giving up.  And that doesn't happen here.  Colt's all like is that what you really want, stay me with me, blah blah blah.  To say he needles Jen is overstating it, but he pleads and protests a little too much.  And of course all those dreams the heroine had at the start of the story?  Suddenly don't seem to matter so much anymore.  Sigh.

Final Grade = D+

I love the way Loren D. Estleman writes about the city of Detroit, one of the great all-time settings for crime novels. City Walls is the 31st book to feature Amos Walker, world-weary old-school PI and it delivered exactly what I wanted - snappy writing, Detroit shenanigans, and Amos playing catch-up to piece it all together.

This time out Amos is hired by Emmett Yale, a muckity-muck in the electric car industry to look into the "murder" of his useless stepson.  Amos knows Detroit like the back of his hand, frankly the murder looks and smells like a totally random, senseless killing.  But Yale thinks one of his former employees and the stepson were mixed up in an insider trading scheme and the "random killing" was actually a hit.  Amos has doubts, but takes the case anyway (because of course...) and is soon mixed up with Yale's head of security and the staff at a dying airfield, including a sexy aviatrix, an aging barnstormer and a surly maintenance man.  

When it comes to turning a phrase Estleman is one of the best in the business and as always I was sucked into the writing and world-building from the jump (the story opens in Cleveland, which was serendipitous since that's where my work conference was!) .  Unfortunately the whole thing doesn't tie together as neatly as I would have liked.  Look, sometimes a coincidence truly is a coincidence and people will exploit those coincidences for their own gain.  Doesn't mean I want that in my crime fiction reading. I like tidy, all wrapped up in a bow, where all the pieces fit neatly together.  I had a good time reading this, I enjoyed what I always enjoy about books in this series, but I wanted a bit more oomph in the mystery.

Final Grade = B-

Mini-Reviews: Suspense Round-Up

While my reading mojo has been pretty decent for the start of 2023, my blogging mojo is still on life support. I used to be the girl who would write up to three blog posts a week and these days getting one done feels a bit like climbing Mt. Everest. So in a bid to not let this blog stagnant, plus provide proof that I have been reading, it's time for another round of mini-reviews - the all suspense edition!

Monkey in the Middle byLoren D. Estleman is the 30th book in the author's Amos Walker series, which began back in 1980. Amos was old school back then, which means in a modern digital age he's practically a dinosaur. I've got a thing for hardboiled PI types working "the mean streets" and Amos' beat is Detroit - which is a pitch perfect setting for crime novels given that the truth is usually more bizarre and corrupt than any fiction writer could cook up.  This time out Amos is hired (sort of) by a greener than grass would-be journalist who is in way over his head with an on-the-run government whistleblower. Complicating matters for Amos are a bestselling author with connections to the case, a media savvy (and hungry) defense attorney, and an assassin who Amos has a history with. Oh, and his ex-wife just passed away. 

I read Estleman for the writing (the man can turn a phrase) and the world-building. I stay to see how many jabs he can take at the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions.  This was a really solid read that kept me guessing and, per usual, I was sucked into Amos' world.  Then I got to the ending, which just didn't work for me. Out of the all the possible whodunits, Estleman went with the one that made the least amount of sense to me. I just didn't "get" the motive - and I'm a tidy reader who likes motive.  Also, by book #30 it's expected that stand-alone might be a bridge too far, but I've hop-scotched around this series so there was some series baggage here I didn't entirely "get." I still understood what was happening and who people were, but I think that aspect will work better for folks caught up on the series.

Final Grade = B-

Ghost 19 by Simone St. James is a novella that released on audio back in October 2022, and was published in eBook this month. I'm a major St. James fangirl and couldn't believe I lost track of the audio debut, and not wanting to wait for the eBook that's the format I went with.

Meh. I was disappointed in this.  St. James employs the slightly unhinged heroine trope which I've made no bones about admitting to the entire world I REALLY DO NOT LIKE IN SUSPENSE NOVELS I WANT ALL THE COMPETENT HEROINES GIVE THEM TO ME NOW!  

Ahem.  Anyway.  It's 1959 and middling actress Ginette Cox leaves New York City on the advice of her doctor who suggests she needs less "excitement" in her life. She rents a house upstate where she takes to watching her new neighbors a la Hitchcock's Rear Window. She's not in residence at 19 Howard Avenue for long when she starts hearing unearthly noises coming from the basement.  Oh, and she's trapped - she literally cannot leave the house. Is it a ghost or is it her own madness?

Look, I'm not a complete dunderhead. I get what St. James was doing with the whole misogyny late 1950s "hysterical" woman living an unconventional life society disapproves of thing - but I just couldn't with Ginette. She annoyed me. Oh and did I mention this mess of nerves somehow bags a man at the end of the book? The ghost story was suitably creepy and the crime compelling in a heinous way - but otherwise this left me cold. 

Final Grade = C-

Death by Smoothie byLaura Levine is the 19th book in the increasingly problematic Jaine Austen cozy series. Much like Stephanie Plum, these books follow a distinct pattern: 1) wacky antics by Jaine's parents who live in a condo community in Florida 2) Jaine's "mean girl" next door neighbor and Neiman Marcus shoe salesman, Lance, will be snide to her 3) Jaine's cat, Prozac, will get up to hijinks that taxes her patience 4) a dating disaster of epic proportions and 5) Jaine's incredibly unhealthy relationship with food and various food related jokes.

This time out Jaine lands a job as a script doctor for a new play based on the cult classic TV show, I Married a Zombie. The producer is a geek obsessed with the TV show and he and his equally geeky girlfriend are calling the shots. It's a dismal script, but it's a well-paying job and as a freelancer Jaine can't be picky. She starts second-guessing her choices though when Misty arrives on the scene and is cast in the lead role despite the fact that she's a terrible actress and more so a terrible person. Everyone (justifiably) hates her guts, but it's still a shock when her like-clockwork 3PM smoothie is poisoned.  Now everyone in the production is a suspect and it's up to Jaine to find the real murderer.

Look, I start each new book in this series knowing exactly what I'm going to get - which is why I picked up this entry when I did (after a particularly gut-wrenching romance read).  I wanted mindless brain candy fluff and that's what this book delivered. Also, Levine has a knack for keeping the mystery humming along, providing plenty of suspects and motives to choose from.  Unfortunately she chose poorly in this entry.  Nearly every secondary character has a reason to want Misty dead and yet the culprit is the one with the least believable motive of all.  Like, any other choice would have been better.  A solid entry that didn't stick the landing.

Final Grade = C

Mini-Reviews: Mystery Round-Up

I'm neck-deep in a slump at the moment and, unfortunately, it is rooted in a lot of factors feeding off of each other.  I'm super busy at The Day Job, current events are depressing me, and my habit of checking Twitter is making me increasingly passive aggressive (not a good look for me).  It's also sapped my blogging mojo to the point where, for the first (serious) time in 15 years of blogging I'm wondering why I bother (note to self: stop checking your stats).  But nobody wants to hear me whine and frankly I'm kind of sick of myself - so desperate times call for desperate measures.  Yep, it's comfort food of choice for Wendy: mysteries.  I fell in love with reading because of mysteries so it makes sense I turn back to them when I'm feeling a mite low.

I'm still completely swept up in my nostalgia trip with the Sharon McCone series by Marcia Muller.  I read the first 19 or so books in my teens/early 20s, then dropped off when I fell head over feet for romance.  I've been positively gorging on them in audio and it's been just what the doctor ordered.

I recently finished Book #7, Eye of the Storm, and it has been the highlight of the nostalgia gorge so far.  Why?  Because I didn't remember a lick about it, and frankly, that shocks me.  Why?  Because it's like Muller wrote this book specifically with Teenage Wendy in mind.  Imagine if a Gothic and a really good episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? had a baby - and that's Eye of the Storm.  Sharon heads to a tiny, nothing town in the Sacramento Delta area after her baby sister gets in over her head with a new beau (who fancies himself a chef) and a rundown old mansion she wants to turn into a B&B.  The locals are insular, the mansion is on an isolated island (you need to take a ferry to get to it), there's a creepy old legend (because of course there is) and someone is trying to scare them off.

I liked this story quite a bit, again for the nostalgia.  The rest of it doesn't work quite as well because other than Sharon, you pretty much end up disliking every other character in the story.  Even Sharon's nieces and nephew (still kids!) - which takes some doing.  Plus Sharon is operating outside of her usual San Francisco setting, which is half the charm of this series (if I'm being honest).  Still, I'm a Scooby Doo nerd and the "creepy old house" angle always (ALWAYS!) reels me in.

Loren Estleman writes what I call Macho Guy Books.  He's best known for his crime novels set in Detroit, despite the fact he's got a couple of different series (including westerns!) under his belt.  I read the Amos Walker (private detective) series where everyone talks like they've stepped out of a noir gangster film and there's not a single honest person in the entire city of Detroit.  Black and White Ball finds Amos working for Peter Macklin, a hitman featured in another series by Estelman.  So this is #27 in the Walker series and #7 in the Macklin series.  Technically speaking.

The story opens up with Amos looking for the wayward husband of a former flame.  The guy embezzled money from Chrysler, hooked up with a blonde half his age, and is suspected to be somewhere across the border.  However, just as Amos is ready to storm the motel near Toronto, his mark is found dead, a bullet to the head while the blonde was taking a shower.  It has professional job written all over it - which is how he comes into the orbit of Macklin.  Amos has no stomach for those that make their living off murder for hire, but through a series of circumstances, he takes a job to protect Macklin's soon to be ex-wife.  Someone is threatening to kill her, Macklin knows who it is, he just needs time to run the guy down (literally and figuratively).

I've hopscotched my way through about a dozen of the Amos Walker books, haven't read a single Macklin story, but didn't have a problem keeping up.  But this is a read that takes some getting used to.  The Walker stories are in first person, the Macklin's in third, and Estleman shifts between the two styles.  Luckily he does this during chapter breaks (and not mid-paragraph) but shifting between the two within the same book isn't always easy going, even though I didn't find it to be a completely terrible authorial decision (but I can totally see how it will drive some readers batty).

What I liked about this one is what I tend to like about all the Amos books.  The tough guy cliches, the femme fatales, the crooked cops, the noir-ish shroud Estleman spreads over the city of Detroit.  I also loved how this book started (the Canada scenes) and ended.  Given that this is the most recent book in two long-running series, newbies aren't going to find a ton of in-depth character development here - which is mainly where I'm going to ding this one.  But if you're already a fan of one, or both, of the series, this was time well spent.

Chit Chat and Various Book Ramblings

It's been a while since I've done one of these updates.  Couple that with some books I want to mention that I don't have a lot to say about and general holiday brain-melt, here we are.  So what's going on with me?

+++++

First, the big news - that Big Ol' Leadership Management Class Thing that I did for work?  Yeah, it's now done.  I survived 15 weeks, a group project (20 page written report + presentation), and had "graduation" last week.  Let me tell you how glad I am that's over.  Yes, it was a great experience, I learned stuff, and it looks shiny on Ye Olde Resume but....still.  I'm glad it's over.

+++++

In other news?  Star Wars.  Meh.  Look, I'll go see it.  Eventually.  But I have not been excited about this thing since it was first announced.  Now James Bond?  Spectre?  I was twirling around in circles....months ahead of time.  Maybe they need to put Han Solo in a tux and shove a martini in his hand?  I'd feel like I was missing out but....meh. 

+++++

I've gotten through some mystery/suspense reading and audiobook listening of late.  Chalk this up to buying a new car last year (built-in bluetooth!!!) and finally getting around to downloading the Overdrive app on my new phone which has WAY more memory than old phone.

I listened to Black Irish by Stephan Talty, mostly because the Buffalo, New York setting intrigued.  I went to college in Buffalo and lived there for almost six years.  Verdict?  Meh.  It was OK.  Mostly it was a Buffalo I didn't recognize (hey, I lived there almost 20 years ago and I was a college student pretty much "isolated" to campus life).  You know what this read like?  Like Talty wants to do for Buffalo what Dennis Lehane did for Boston.  It's on the gory side, so be warned, and while I didn't love it - I also didn't hate it.  It was also a fast listen.  I'll try the next book in the series.

On Keishon's recommendation I'm currently listening to The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo.  I'm glad she warned me about the slow start.  There's a lot of set-up and it seems to be all over the place.  I'm thinking I'm finally at the point where we're going to settle in for a more "linear" story - and think it will likely pick up for me now.  The Scandinavian crime "thing"  has largely eluded me - but I've been meaning to try Nesbo for a while and he's one of Keishon's favorites - so here I am.

Over the weekend I read The Sundown Speech by Loren D. Estleman, which is the 25th (!) book in his Amos Walker, Detroit PI series.  This was another OK read.  Estleman originally published it in a local paper as a serial about 10 years ago, expanded it, and now we have a book.  Amos is in Ann Arbor this time out so we have crunchy granola clients and a villain too smart for his own good.  It's not a book I would recommend to someone new to the series (Estleman's style is better suited for the darker noir world of rundown Detroit), but I read it in two gulps so....what am I complaining about again?

In the romance world, I tried but ultimately failed to listen to Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren.  As most of you already know, this book sprang to life out of fan-fiction and that actually isn't my complaint about it.  It also has a boss/secretary trope which, as we all know, Wendy loves despite knowing better.  No, the problem was I loathed these people.  Seriously.  The hero is an asshat and the heroine's body keeps "betraying her."  Seriously, those words are used in the text.  Her body "betrays her."  That's a romance writing tic that just needs to die a thousand burning deaths already.

Anyway, he's a jerk - keeps ripping her panties off - and even though she's a smart-mouth and fires back at him a lot - we still have Ye Olde Betraying Body thing.  I just couldn't see wasting my time on two characters that I literally loathed.  I've DNF'ed books for a lot less.

On the bright side?  While I normally have a hard time with romance on audio (it's a quirk - I have issues with someone "reading" me sex scenes), the narrator here (Grace Grant) was really quite good.  If you like romance on audio, you might want to look her up (my brief search turned up narrating for Christina Lauren, Lisa Renee Jones and Colleen Hoover).

+++++

I'm hoping to squeeze out a couple more reads before the end of the year - which is time to remind folks that if you're waiting with bated breath for my Best of 2015 list?  Keep waiting until early January.  Outside of mentioning a mere three titles as part of H&H's round-ups - I always wait until the new year arrives.  Because, you know, I could read something awesome-sauce on December 31.

+++++

If blogging doesn't happen again this week (and you know, it might not) - I hope that everyone has a nice, relaxing holiday.  Ho ho ho!

The Left-Handed Dollar

I'm a no-frills sort of reader.  I tend to favor novels that are written "cleanly."  No muss, no fuss, no frippery frou-frou.  I tend to dislike writers who throw in $50 words just to show-off, when honestly the $1 words work just as well and keep my brains from bleeding out of my ears.  About three-quarters of the time "lush" is totally lost on me.  However a girl does need to flex her grey matter every now and then, which is a niche that Loren Estleman fills for me.  His Amos Walker crime novels sound like the author still writes on a typewriter (which he does), and it always takes me a couple of chapters to capture the way he writes dialogue.  It's the stuff of 1940s noir.  They'd have to reanimate Bogart if Estleman ever sold the film rights.

The Left-Handed Dollar is the 20th book to feature Detroit private investigator Amos Walker, and this time out he's hired by local lawyer Lucille Lettermore (known as "Lefty Lucy" for her choice in clients), to help spring aging mobster Joey "Ballistic" Ballista.  Lucy's plan is to clear Joey's record of an earlier conviction, thereby trotting him into court as a "first time offender."  Amos is all set to turn down the job, until he meets with Joey.  Damn if he doesn't believe the man when he says he didn't do it.  What was Joey convicted of doing?  Packing a reporter's car full of dynamite.  The reporter in question didn't die, identified Joey in a police line-up, and oh yeah - happens to be Amos' only real friend in the world.  Sticky, sticky.

Detroit has quite a bit in common with California - the truth tends to be stranger than fiction.  Which is why I think it's one of the all-time great settings for crime novels.  The more things are effed-up in Detroit, the more they stay the same.  Amos Walker works in this milieu, and it gives these books a wonderful, gritty, and dirty sense of place.  It's also the perfect setting for the type of dialogue that Estleman tends to favor in these books.  I'll be honest, nobody talks like this in real life (well, at least nobody I know), but you don't really care as the reader because it makes you think, gets your grey matter firing on cylinders, and is a throw-back to an era when dialogue in movies wasn't inane chatter.  It's not for everybody, but if you like the craft of how words can be strung together to sing, it's good stuff.

I classify this series as "crime novels" because while they're decent mysteries, they're not real puzzlers from the Agatha Christie school.  It's basically all about Amos running around, wise-crackin', and trying to shift through the lies that suspects inevitably tell.  This book is no different.  Ultimately Amos has to take all those lies, spin them around, put them back together, and come up with the truth.  Which he does here, with an inspired ending that really worked for me.

I'm not sure how much longer Estleman can keep writing about Amos, but for now I'm content to hold out hope for at least a few more entries.  There's a reason Sue Grafton hasn't let Kinsey Millhone escape the 1980s - it saves her from aging her heroine.  Estleman has aged Amos.  He's a Vietnam veteran, which means even if he was 18 at the tail end of the war, he'd be in his late 50s in 2011. I've read six books in this series so far, and by my count Amos has suffered from about 25 concussions.  I'm not sure how much longer he can go on - but it's kind of fun to see his character enter the 21st century.  He still doesn't have a computer (!), but at least he's got a cell phone now.  Time is marching on, even if he's still the same guy he's always been.

This is a good, solid entry in a series that allows me to break-up all the "girl" books I read.  I liked Amos.  If I ever needed the services of a private investigator, he'd be my guy.  Not the smoothest operator around, but tenacious, smart, and amusing enough to allow you to overlook any foibles he has.  It's one of the oldest gags in fiction - the tough guy who always gets his man...or woman...or whatever.  But just because it's old, doesn't mean it still doesn't work.

Final Grade = B