The Witch Finder

Starred review from May 4, 1998
Mystery fans who think that Estleman's novels about the Detroit-based PI Amos Walker (returned after a seven-year retirement in 1997's Never Street) make him the natural heir of Raymond Chandler will have that conviction confirmed here. Walker's latest tale is so rich in Chandler-esque dialogue and description that it would likely elicit a boozy chuckle of recognition from the master himself: "Stuart Lund came in at six-two and three hundred pounds in gray silk tailoring with a large head of wavy yellow hair, blue eyes like wax drippings, and a black chevron-shaped moustach he hadn't bothered to bleach." Lund is a lawyer who summons Walker to a secret meeting at a Detroit airport hotel with Jay Bell Furlong, a world-famous architect who is supposedly dying in Los Angeles. Before he passes on, Furlong wants Walker to find the person who ended the architect's romance with a much younger woman eight years ago by sending him a photo of her in bed with another man. Furlong has just discovered that the photo was a fake. The possible suspects include various Furlong family members and several rivals. Struggling through an overheated Detroit described as vividly and lovingly as Chandler's L.A., Walker survives a bullet to his head and sneaks out of the hospital against doctors' orders to get on with the case, just as Philip Marlowe would have. There may be a few too many descriptions of staircases, buildings and old cars, but Estleman more than makes up for these digressions by drawing new life from one of the genre's classic resources.

Starred review from April 15, 1998
Jay Bell Furlong is America's best known architect. Now he's dying and wants to know only one thing: who destroyed his May-December romance with Lily Talbot. She was a grad student, and he was a guest lecturer at her college. They became engaged. Then a picture of her in bed with a Furlong rival destroyed the relationship despite her protestations of innocence. Furlong subsequently learned the photo was a fake, but the damage was done. Furlong and his lifetime assistant, Stuart Lund, hire Detroit investigator Amos Walker to discover the source of the photograph. There are a number of suspects: ex-wives may have done it for spite; Furlong's son, John, may have felt the need to protect his considerable inheritance; professional rivals could have done it to right real or imagined wrongs; and even loyal Stuart Lund may have had a hidden agenda. Walker is Detroit old school all the way, and anyone raised in the city Henry Ford built follows the money. The trail takes Walker into the upper reaches of society and into the worst of Detroit's many bad neighborhoods--in both places he reaffirms his belief in the moral ambivalence of his fellow humans. The twelfth Walker novel is another brilliant entry in this classic neo-noir series. Amos is the tough, cynical, funny, lonely direct descendant of Spade, Marlowe, and Archer. In today's morally ambiguous world, he still has a code and lives by it as if it mattered. ((Reviewed April 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)