Jitterbug

This thoroughly researched novel set in wartime Detroit presents an epic assortment of characters involved one way or another in "Kilroy murders." The deranged perpetrator leaves the GI slogan "Kilroy was here" at each crime scene. Narrator Garrick Hagon adopts a tough-guy cynicism that sometimes gets in the way of the mood of individual scenes. His characterizations and attempts at ethnic accents are sometimes offensively cartoony. Otherwise, he gives a workmanlike, if unremarkable, reading. Sound quality of these tapes is uneven with arbitrary shifts in volume and balance. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 28, 1998
Writing with wit and carefully crafting a chilling suspense plot, Estleman (Journey of the Dead) delivers another spine-tingling crime novel set in Detroit. This time, however, unlike in his Amos Walker novels (Never Street, 1997, etc.), the action tales place during WWII. The heat is on Racket Squad leader Lieutenant Maximilian Zagreb and his three detectives (known collectively as The Four Horsemen for their unorthodox, brutal, mostly illegal methods) when someone starts killing people for hoarding ration coupons. Using some artful manipulation and some very unsubtle pressure, Zagreb leans on a couple of unlikely sources for help. Frankie "The Conductor" Orr, a local mob boss, and Dwight Littlejohn, a black riveter in an airplane factory, are unwilling participants in Zagreb's efforts to smoke out the killer dubbed Kilroy by the newspapers. As the cops twist arms and Kilroy's victims pile up, Detroit explodes in a bloody race riot that summer of 1943, making Zagreb think that Anzio might be safer. Terrific, tough characters, snappy dialogue, crackling action and some imaginative applications of the third degree, make this a triumph for Estleman.