From Publishers Weekly
PI Amos Walker makes a two-fisted foray into the Detroit Latin music scene in Estleman's 50th book, the 17th entry in this streetwise series (after 2002's Sinister Heights). Eschewing the suburbs, Amos inhabits a tiny house bordering on the Polish enclave of Hamtramck, surrounded by metropolitan Detroit, and works out of a dingy downtown office with a resident wino. When Gilia Cristobal, a glitzy young Latin music sensation, summons him to find the woman blackmailing her, Amos delves into her past and discovers a very different se¤orita from the platinum bombshell strutting the stage. A Central American freedom fighter unjustly accused of murder, Gilia fled north, assumed another identity and never looked back. Terror resurfaces when the decayed body of a woman with the same name turns up next door to a Mexicantown woman who breeds vicious dogs for sale to unsavory characters. Drug smuggling, torture and the music industry goon squad keep Amos running and calling in favors from press and police friends. In the great noir tradition, he rarely blows his cool, the throwaway lines never let up and though some may think he's over the hill, the Vietnam vet perseveres. Wordsmith par excellence, Estleman has Amos deliver passionate laments for his city that add a melancholy counterpoint like background music.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From Booklist
Latin singer Gilia Cristobal, the hottest commodity in show business, hires Detroit private eye Amos Walker to get to the bottom of a scam involving the singer's designer gowns, but her real problem is blackmail. It turns out she's not really who she claims to be. Years earlier, she left her native South America with a purchased identity after death squads and drug lords overran her country. Now someone is threatening to reveal her past to her enemies. Walker, who has developed more than a passing interest in his alluring employer, agrees to help, and soon he's knee-deep in a tangled web of assassins, drug dealers, revolutionary wanna-bes, and adoring Cristobal fans. The groups overlap, which makes his job even tougher. Walker is a classic hard-boiled private eye. He breathes air heavy with smoke and cordite, he delivers his dialogue through clenched teeth, and he operates by a murky moral code only he understands. For fans of the genre, that makes him about as comfortable as an old trenchcoat.
Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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