Burning Midnight

Starred review from April 16, 2012
An unusual client hires Amos Walker in Edgar-finalist Estleman’s outstanding 22nd novel featuring the Detroit PI (after 2011’s Infernal Angels). Walker’s longtime friend and professional ally, Insp. John Alderdyce “of the Detroit Police Homicide Division,” is worried about his son’s Mexican brother-in-law, Ernesto Pasada. Pasada has started hanging out in Detroit’s Mexicantown with the Maldados, a gang “with a branch office in every city between here and Juarez” and no scruples about killing cops. Alderdyce wants Walker to somehow make the Maldados believe that keeping their hooks in Pasada is more trouble than it’s worth. The inspector gives the PI a plausible cover story for poking around Mexicantown, but soon after Walker does so, the bodies start to fall. Estleman offers one of his cleverest solutions to the whodunit, which is no small achievement and another sign that his font of creativity remains full. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.