MOTOR CITY BLUE

by Loren D. Estleman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1980

Hard-boiled sleuthing in dank Detroit--as 32-year-old narrator Amos Walker, a smug shamus in the flip-tough subgenre, makes a moderately engaging debut. Amos is working on two cases here, and they'll link up, of course, in the end: he happens to see his old Vietnam commander Francis Kramer being dragged into a car (Kramer soon turns up dead); and he is also hired by an old mobster to locate young foster-daughter Marla, who has disappeared from her posh finishing school. The clue to Maria's whereabouts is, as usual these days, a pornopic of the girl, so Amos sleuths among porn-shops, brothels (sampling the service), and such. . . while also keeping up with the Kramer murder case. More bodies surface, Army Intelligence intrudes--as Amos realizes ""I happened to step into the same muckhole from two directions"": Kramer was working undercover to expose local Ku Klux Klanners who executed a black labor leader; and Marla is in fact the labor leader's vengeful girlfriend. . . . Familiar, contrived plotting--which Estleman has to have explained by Amos in talky chunks. But, aside from lapses into near-parody (""The air was as bitter as a stiffed hooker""), Amos' jauntily sardonic narration--with some help from the Detroit sleaze--manages to keep the proceedings from sliding into sheer cliche. Painless.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION