A Smile on the Face of the Tiger

Amos Walker #14

by Loren D. Estleman

Our Review


The Haunting Past


Loren Estleman's protagonist Amos Walker has long been a cornerstone of modern-day private eye literature. Estleman's latest effort, A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (the 14th in the series), is filled with all the wry charm and expert insight we've come to expect from Estleman's controlled fusion of wit and wisdom. The author always gives his novels an extra dose of genuinely moving humanity, featuring honest character motivation and a gripping, energetic first-person narrative.

This time out, P.I. Amos Walker is hired by a New York publisher to hunt down the vanished pulp author Eugene Booth, a onetime acclaimed writer of noir crime novels who stopped writing four decades earlier. Booth was never able to recapture the respect and celebrity he had with his most famous novel, Paradise Valley, the fictionalized account of an actual 1943 race riot in Detroit. Though the publisher was set to reprint Paradise Valley, Booth inexplicably returned his advance, broke the contract, and abandoned his home. Now it's up to Walker to find out exactly why.

Eventually Walker tracks Booth to a desolate cabin near the Canadian border; in the older man Walker discovers a like-minded individual who has a real need to dig to the heart of the truth no matter what the price. Booth doesn't want Paradise Valley reprinted because he's rewriting his masterwork and making an effort to tell the real story behind the race riot, including the brutal fact that the police allowed several lynchings to occur for fear of their own safety. Though Booth tried to investigate the case nearly 50 years ago, it cost him greatly when his wife was murdered. Now, when it appears that Booth is being spied on, Walker goes into action to try to reveal events covered up over a half century ago but which still have deadly ramifications even today.

With his tight and pointed prose, Loren D. Estleman is highly capable of providing the reader with an engaging novel concerning racism, police conspiracy, and the haunting past that one can never let go of. Estleman's writing is so sharp and detailed that there is always a supple but convincing underpinning of deeper issues roiling beneath the moment. A Smile on the Face of the Tiger offers us a poetic voice of subtle yet resonating themes relating to loss, audacity, and the hope for redemption.

The author has a real respect and deference for the hard-boiled and noir authors who came long before him. The subject of a mostly forgotten pulp writer is handled with great admiration and affection. Beneath the guise of Booth are his real-life counterparts Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Horace McCoy, and dozens of other suspense authors lost in the recesses of time. That sense of fondness is what makes A Smile on the Face of the Tiger a standout in the Walker canon -- evocative, elaborate, and yet always endearing. The complexity of character detail, the cohesive story structure, and the poignant writing prove once again just what a superior stylist and master craftsman Estleman remains.

The natural fluidity of protagonist and plot is what holds the center of this tightly woven novel together. Walker is an Everyman, a private eye who not merely does his job but is his job. There are no superman elements here, but rather an honesty and humor that prevails through the investigation at hand. The mystery itself is well wrought and engaging, with Walker slowly moving over the same terrain as he rereads novels and studies crime reports and newspaper articles to discover what lies at the core of a long-forgotten writer's life. Walker's persona remains wonderfully balanced between the drive for justice and the humble need for acerbic, self-effacing humor. The author never fails to earn our confidence that the next Amos Walker novel will be of the same distinguished high quality as all the rest.

--Tom Piccirilli

Tom Piccirilli is the author of eight novels, including Hexes and Shards, and his Felicity Grove mystery series, consisting of The Dead Past and Sorrow's Crow...

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Detective

295 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He writes with a manual typewriter.

Estleman is most famous for his novels about P.I. Amos Walker. Other series characters include Old West marshal Page Murdock and hitman Peter Macklin. He has also written a series of novels about the history of crime in Detroit (also the setting of his Walker books.) His non-series works include Bloody Season, a fictional recreation of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and several novels and stories featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Series:
* Amos Walker Mystery
* Valentino Mystery
* Detroit Crime Mystery
* Peter Macklin Mystery
* Page Murdock Mystery

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the 14th adventure of Amos Walker. Walker, a Detroit private eye, is a throwback and heir apparent to Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, without being a cheap cardboard imitation. This series is “hard-boiled” in the best sense of the word – engaging, witty, poignant, cynical, timely and always entertaining. In a genre in which such series and their protagonists run out steam after a handful of books, Estleman and Amos show no sign of mediocrity or stumbling into the literary sunset.

In this book Walker is hired by a New York publisher, with whom he has a “past”, to find a pulp-fiction author, whose literary history is was much more typical of the genre – see above. Said author’s fifteen minutes of fame were brief and meteoric; now he is among the missing and Walker’s client wants to gain his permission to reprint his books. Sounds simple and straightforward, but this an Amos Walker case and things quickly become much more complicated.

Locating the reclusive author proves a not so onerous task for Amos, but that opens up the proverbial can of worms and Amos finds himself embroiled in a 50+ year old murder case, police corruption, Detroit history and the tentacles of the mafia. The secondary cast of characters is fascinating; the twists and turns in the plot will hold your attention; and Walker’s dialogue and observations will keep you chuckling. A Smile On The Face Of The Tiger is another great mystery in a great series.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic book by Mr. Estleman. Filled with twists and turns. Great crime writer but not if you want the whole plot up front, like a couple of the reviews. I have enjoyed every Amos Walker novel so far and look forward to the next. Oh and if you’re from Detroit or anywhere in Michigan I recommend these books. Kind of the Raymond Chandler of Detroit

[Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read lots of Estleman's books years ago, so was happy to try this one. Not bad, but not special.

[David Riester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detroit, Michigan,

[Hilda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Complicated

[Dave Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has all you want

They don't get any better. The old pot-boiler with better plot, better dialogue, better setting, better characters, you get subtle and the sledgehammer.

[Steven Denenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent as always, always worth reading!

Esselman rights better than almost anybody. Every sentence is tight and original and interesting. The plots are far more complicated than you think they will be at first but he lets you follow them and brings up pieces that you remember from a long time ago.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#14 in the Amos Walker series. Finalist 2001 Shamus Award for Best Novel.

Detroit PI Amos Walker series - When a New York publisher asks Walker to track down author Eugene Booth, who's refusing to allow his classic Paradise Valley to be reissued, Walker's first instinct is to say no. But Booth's novel, about a Detroit race riot in 1943, fascinates Walker, especially after he finds Booth's dictation tapes. Walker discovers that it's not just whiskey and cigarettes that have affected the author. His wife was murdered 50 years ago to prevent Booth from spilling the truth about the events he fictionalized. Walker traces Booth to a rundown motel on the shores of Lake Huron. His presence there is no surprise, given his fondness for solitude and fish. But why is mobster Glad Eddie Cypress, who should be gearing up for a big book tour, holed up at the same motel? When Walker finds Booth swinging from the rafters, he decides to find out. When the number of people who wanted Booth dead starts multiplying, and a 50-year-old race riot and murder move back into the spotlight, Walker is hard-pressed to keep himself from becoming history.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

library audiobook. Maybe wouldn't be a 5 if you weren't from Detroit, but Estleman nails landmark after landmark, including a cabin on Black Lake, a seedy motel on West Jefferson, John T King books...Voices were good...References the 1943 race riots, also insights into the pulp mystery publishing. If there was a questionable scene, it was the NYC publishing agent staying in Hazel Park rather than at least Ferndale if not Huntington Woods.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Amos Walker Novel. OK, this might have been it, the one I knew he had in him. No wasted words, no extraneous action, no bogus reaction. Pure noir that rings true on the level of Chandler and Hammett.

Perhaps its not coincidental that the subject is an old pulp fiction writer who is asked to resurrect his career and ends up resurrecting old wounds.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lesser effort in the "Amos Walker" series, whose earlier titles sketch a gritty, hardboiled Detroit that is within shouting distance of Chandler's Los Angeles. This one isn't.

[Steve]

17 pages in one week - i think i'm not engaged with this author. one more try and ---adios.
it is adios time. sorry

[Carolyn Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific "noir" description of setting and characters.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great character development - some Detroit history thrown in - once again a very good read from Estleman!

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Makes Mickey Spillane seem like literature.

[David Vanness]

My copy same cover with 5 cassettes.