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Summary
Author Notes
Loren D. Estleman was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on September 15, 1952. He received a B.A. in English literature and journalism from Eastern Michigan University in 1974. He spent several years as a reporter on the police beat before leaving to write full time in 1980. He wrote book reviews for such newspapers as The New York Times and The Washington Post and contributed articles to such periodicals as TV Guide.
He is a writer of mysteries and westerns. His first novel was published in 1976 and since then he has published more than 70 books including the Amos Walker series, Writing the Popular Novel, Roy and Lillie: A Love Story, The Confessions of Al Capone, and a The Branch and the Scaffold. He received four Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Golden Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from Western Writers of America, and the Michigan Author's Award in 1997.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The second installment of Estleman's Detroit trilogy ( Whiskey River ) is terrific: fast, intricate and often funny. Choreographing the movements leading to the August 1966 Detroit riots, Estleman focuses on three main characters: Rick Amery, an ex-cop hired to spy on a Ralph Nader-like consumer advocate; inspector Lew Canada, trying to prevent a war between the Mafia and black gangs, and a likely race riot; and Quincy Springfield, numbers racketeer and ``blind pig'' (after-hours club) operator. But the author does not stint on minor characters, and they, too, leap off the page. A crippled mob boss resolves to oust ``the coloreds'' from the rackets while his exiled father schemes to reclaim the family business; there's also a retired newsman right off The Front Page , plus a Jimmy Hoffa-type labor leader. Set pieces are no less than stunning, notably a publicity stunt to embarrass GM chairman James Roche, and a big black funeral. Period details work wonderfully as well: the clothes, cars, songs, political references, even the price of lamb chops at the A & P are right on the money. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Sinewy second volume of Estleman's projected three-part paean to crime in Detroit. It's 1966, and much has changed since the Prohibition days of Whiskey River (1990): now Detroit is famed for cars, not booze; its crime has spread from saloons to boardrooms; and its upstart gangsters are black, not Jewish. But much remains the same: The Mafia still dominates crime, and crime still gives the city the husky, hard-nosed nature so vigorously limned here by Estleman. The story unfolds through three intercut plotlines. The briefest, yet most resonant historically, follows police inspector Lew Canada as he digs into the early sins of labor leader Albert Brock (read: Jimmy Hoffa) for dirt to leverage Brock into staving off an incipient race war between black and Italian mobs. With help from the now-aged reporter Connie Minor--who narrated Whiskey River- -Canada finds the mud in an incriminating photograph and flings it at Brock in a confrontation redolent with the stink of the blood and sweat that built Detroit. Canada also figures in the galvanic second plotline--pointing to the city's future rather than its past--as he monitors two black racketeers about to mix it up with the Mafia. Caught in a squeeze between rival father and son Mafia bosses, Quincy Springfield and Lydell Lafayette prove the story's richest, most endearing characters, whose efforts to save their numbers rackets from mob takeover end in affecting tragedy and a political firestorm. Then there's the third plotline, detailing the conversion to consumer advocacy of an ex-cop hired by GM security to dig dirt on auto-industry gadfly Wendell Porter (read: Ralph Nader); though sleek and informative of Motown's corporate sins, it seems an anomalous, even superfluous, subplot. Less a painstaking re-creation like Whiskey River than a brawny--if patchy--urban portrait that's close in spirit to the author's Amos Walker p.i. series. As usual, Estleman's sly prose is good enough to make you read more than one page twice.
Booklist Review
This second in Estleman's Detroit trilogy (following Whiskey River [BKL S 1 90]) moves forward from running guns and booze in the 1930s to hanging loose in the 1960s, complete with bad clothes, afros, and candy-apple red GTOs. Estleman seems more intent here on paying homage to the Motor City than on writing a mystery. Place is more important for Estleman than action, though this time several workable plots merge forcefully toward the novel's conclusion. One car-obsessed ex-cop is lured into spying on a consumerist organization wreaking havoc on the auto companies by promoting the implementation of weird safety devices like airbags and seat belts. Meanwhile, a crooked cop is enlisted by some Mafia-linked hoodlums caught up in a nasty fight with black gangs over control of street crime, numbers, and prostitution. The other side of the dispute is captured in the dilemmas facing Quincy Springfield, a black hustler with a philosophic bent, who faces hard times, broken fingers, and the absence of a good woman. Details power the action: long, straight roads that run from ghetto to old money mansions and back again. And then there are the cars. The lure of a chrome-covered T-Bird ends one cop's career, but a canary-yellow Z28 Camaro gets him back in the game. ~--Peter Robertson
Library Journal Review
Motown is Motor City, the Detroit of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, the Detroit of street hogs, blind pigs, union bosses, and tough cops. It's a rough town, rife with dirt, crime, and corruption, its steamy streets redolent of whiskey, blood, and sweat. This is the second volume of a trilogy ( Whiskey River , Bantam, 1990, was the first) tracing the history of the city from the bottom up. It's the summer of 1966. A Nader-like consumer advocate is just starting to take on the automobile industry. The ghetto is near to boiling. The mayor has the presidential itch, and a local mobster is making a bid to take over the black numbers racket. The story follows the actions of a former police lieutenant as he becomes a consumer advocate, and a black entrepreneur as he becomes the pillar of Detroit's black resistance. Is it good? Listen, Estleman knows crime fiction in ways that Bo can only dream about.-- David B. Mattern, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
