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Detroit #1
Whiskey River
In Detroit in 1925 prohibition has been in force for a year longer than the rest of the States, police corruption is so rampant no-one notices the stench in City Hall. Into this scene comes Constantine Minor, a young and ambitious reporter. The author has twice won the Shamus Award.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1990
87 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
Loren D. Estleman
317 books282 followersLoren 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
May 29, 2019
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★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
If you are a prolific writer like Loren D. Estleman, coming up with ideas would not likely to be a major problem. Obviously. I suspect the problem lies with containing them. It must be an overwhelming temptation to include all the possibilities that occur to you while in the act of writing. Yielding to such could very well work out, but more likely too much inspiration runs the risk smothering the story and blunting the point. From the macro perspective, though, it is anything but a problem. Case in point: the novels that has become known as the Detroit Crime Series. The trilogy now has seven entries.
Whiskey River is the first in the series--which examines through fiction the city of Detroit during a particular decade of the 20th century--and as the title might suggest the backdrop here is the Prohibition Era. The narrator is Connie Minor, a newspaper columnist, who is young and brash and naïve enough to think he knows how the world works. One night he innocently befriends a stranger in an underground speakeasy, never suspecting this man would soon begin his rise through the underworld. It’s an unexpected relationship that serves both men, and through the reporter’s eyes we are allowed to experience the life of a 1930s gangster. One of the most effective scenes, in the dead of winter, has Minor in a ride-along with a clandestine nighttime caravan that crosses a frozen Lake Erie in order to smuggle alcohol into the United States from Canada. These kinds of excursions both thrill and scare Minor as they simultaneously feed his ever-growing career. But there too comes a point where in the company of a rival mob boss he witnesses a gruesome murder, sudden and sickening and intentionally up close; a stern reminder of his vulnerability. Minor must continue to find ways to do his job while navigating a corrupt and dangerous city that has slowly come to see him as a participant in its struggles, a position that automatically places him as an ally to some and an enemy, if only by association, to others.
Whiskey River balances the life of Connie Minor, his wants and needs and fears, with the story of a wide open city. It was a balancing act Estleman needed to introduce and maintain. He was constrained by history. Too much of the sweeping wide-ranging elements of his story were preordained. They could not be manipulated to suit the needs of a novel. Estleman needed the human element for that. Connie Minor’s presence from beginning to end was the only way to arrange a satisfying conclusion. It’s what makes the book much more than a glimpse at a piece of the history of Detroit.
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
If you are a prolific writer like Loren D. Estleman, coming up with ideas would not likely to be a major problem. Obviously. I suspect the problem lies with containing them. It must be an overwhelming temptation to include all the possibilities that occur to you while in the act of writing. Yielding to such could very well work out, but more likely too much inspiration runs the risk smothering the story and blunting the point. From the macro perspective, though, it is anything but a problem. Case in point: the novels that has become known as the Detroit Crime Series. The trilogy now has seven entries.
Whiskey River is the first in the series--which examines through fiction the city of Detroit during a particular decade of the 20th century--and as the title might suggest the backdrop here is the Prohibition Era. The narrator is Connie Minor, a newspaper columnist, who is young and brash and naïve enough to think he knows how the world works. One night he innocently befriends a stranger in an underground speakeasy, never suspecting this man would soon begin his rise through the underworld. It’s an unexpected relationship that serves both men, and through the reporter’s eyes we are allowed to experience the life of a 1930s gangster. One of the most effective scenes, in the dead of winter, has Minor in a ride-along with a clandestine nighttime caravan that crosses a frozen Lake Erie in order to smuggle alcohol into the United States from Canada. These kinds of excursions both thrill and scare Minor as they simultaneously feed his ever-growing career. But there too comes a point where in the company of a rival mob boss he witnesses a gruesome murder, sudden and sickening and intentionally up close; a stern reminder of his vulnerability. Minor must continue to find ways to do his job while navigating a corrupt and dangerous city that has slowly come to see him as a participant in its struggles, a position that automatically places him as an ally to some and an enemy, if only by association, to others.
Whiskey River balances the life of Connie Minor, his wants and needs and fears, with the story of a wide open city. It was a balancing act Estleman needed to introduce and maintain. He was constrained by history. Too much of the sweeping wide-ranging elements of his story were preordained. They could not be manipulated to suit the needs of a novel. Estleman needed the human element for that. Connie Minor’s presence from beginning to end was the only way to arrange a satisfying conclusion. It’s what makes the book much more than a glimpse at a piece of the history of Detroit.
October 28, 2012
This book and the six others in the series take place in Detroit, Michigan. I grew up near Detroit so that is the draw for me. I enjoy reading books that happen in familiar territory. Each book covers one decade from the 1930s to the 1990s. In this first book the protagonist, a newspaper journalist for a fictitious Detroit tabloid The Banner, tells the stories of the mobsters in the city, gathering information by talking with his sources on the battlefields of the underworld and befriending some of them. He does not become a criminal but is commonly immersed in his stories.
Whiskey River is historical fiction published in 1990. Some of the events and people are a real part of Detroit history but the main characters are fiction. It is reminiscent of The Untouchables TV series broadcast from 1959 to 1963 that chronicled the mob activities in Chicago.
Thirteen years is a long time. That’s how long prohibition was in force in the United States. But there was no prohibition in Canada, just across the Detroit River.
Whiskey River is a good story that captures one era in the history of Detroit. The Mob made a comeback with the success of the HBO series The Sopranos that ran from January 1999 through June 2007.
You get to know a lot of unsavory people through this book, people who kill other people. You will probably find that you like some of them. You see the story through the eyes of Connie Minor, a journalist who sometimes cooperates, sometimes joins and sometimes protects the Detroit mobsters. The life he chooses is a complicated and dangerous one. I enjoyed reading about it.
I give Whiskey River four stars and expect to read more books in this Detroit Crime series written by Loren D. Estleman and published in the 1990s. Copies of used books in the series are available online.
It’s 1928, and America is thundering along on wheels made in Detroit, a city growing by leaps and bounds. And while New York and Chicago are just waking up to the bloody hangover of Prohibition, Detroit itself has already been there for a year – filling its bathtubs with bootleg booze and its pockets with cash. This carved-up pirate’s paradise is newspaperman Constance ‘Connie’ Minor’s territory, and he couldn’t have picked one more dangerous.
Whiskey River is historical fiction published in 1990. Some of the events and people are a real part of Detroit history but the main characters are fiction. It is reminiscent of The Untouchables TV series broadcast from 1959 to 1963 that chronicled the mob activities in Chicago.
There was no Jack Dance, no Joey Machine, no Sal Borneo, or Frankie Orr; saddest of all, there was no Connie Minor. But people like them existed in the city, and the situation in Detroit during the years 1919-1939 was as reported.
Thirteen years is a long time. That’s how long prohibition was in force in the United States. But there was no prohibition in Canada, just across the Detroit River.
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol was not made illegal. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibit...
Whiskey River is a good story that captures one era in the history of Detroit. The Mob made a comeback with the success of the HBO series The Sopranos that ran from January 1999 through June 2007.
To feel what we felt, those of us who were there, you had to have been there too, and to have been like us, when the river that glittered on the border between the United States and Canada seemed to match the honey glow of the liquid gold that flowed across it when we were all too young and stupid and full of piss and rotgut to believe for one second that it would never stop flowing.
You get to know a lot of unsavory people through this book, people who kill other people. You will probably find that you like some of them. You see the story through the eyes of Connie Minor, a journalist who sometimes cooperates, sometimes joins and sometimes protects the Detroit mobsters. The life he chooses is a complicated and dangerous one. I enjoyed reading about it.
I give Whiskey River four stars and expect to read more books in this Detroit Crime series written by Loren D. Estleman and published in the 1990s. Copies of used books in the series are available online.
October 10, 2016
Whiskey River begins in 1928 at the height of Prohibition. Jack Dance is an eighteen-year-old on the cusp of becoming one of the top (fictional) gangsters in Detroit. Connie Minor, a young reporter of Greek descent, has just begun his career as a newspaper reporter when the two meet in a blind pig on the night it gets tipped over by the bulls. (I had to look up all this early 20th century slang, so if you don't know those terms, you can too!)
The story is a case of the strange friendship between these two men. As Jack Dance's career, if you want to call it that, rises in the underworld, Connie Minor's follows in journalism due to his reporting on the activities of rum runners and the accompanying police corruption. Minor writes his pieces with all the insight of an inside story. Though he never commits a crime himself, he is often there when they happen. His fascination with Jack Dance, however, does eventually land him in some hot water.
It is a tale you can't put down. The writing is as good as anything by Raymond Chandler, creating the particular flavor of illegal liquor, speakeasies, crime, and violence over the course of about four years.
Reading this one on the heels of The Turner House was a whole experience in itself. Detroit was a mighty city in 1920, almost comparable to Chicago. The two novels are bookends on the rise and fall of a major American city.
My mom was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in a small Michigan town on Lake Huron. Detroit was the closest city. So the first 14 years of her life were the years of Prohibition. How I wish she were still around and I could ask her if she was aware of it and how it impacted her life. She was a very temperate drinker. My dad was not!
I don't remember how I discovered this author or his book. Estleman was born in 1952 in Ann Arbor, MI. Whiskey River is the first in a series of seven novels in which he set out to tell the story of America in the 20th century through the microcosm of Detroit. As he said, "Detroit is the one city whose history mirrors precisely the history of the United States of America." He also wrote many other books yet, despite winning awards, most of his work is out of print already. The Detroit series is now available in eBook form and I plan to read all of them.
The story is a case of the strange friendship between these two men. As Jack Dance's career, if you want to call it that, rises in the underworld, Connie Minor's follows in journalism due to his reporting on the activities of rum runners and the accompanying police corruption. Minor writes his pieces with all the insight of an inside story. Though he never commits a crime himself, he is often there when they happen. His fascination with Jack Dance, however, does eventually land him in some hot water.
It is a tale you can't put down. The writing is as good as anything by Raymond Chandler, creating the particular flavor of illegal liquor, speakeasies, crime, and violence over the course of about four years.
Reading this one on the heels of The Turner House was a whole experience in itself. Detroit was a mighty city in 1920, almost comparable to Chicago. The two novels are bookends on the rise and fall of a major American city.
My mom was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in a small Michigan town on Lake Huron. Detroit was the closest city. So the first 14 years of her life were the years of Prohibition. How I wish she were still around and I could ask her if she was aware of it and how it impacted her life. She was a very temperate drinker. My dad was not!
I don't remember how I discovered this author or his book. Estleman was born in 1952 in Ann Arbor, MI. Whiskey River is the first in a series of seven novels in which he set out to tell the story of America in the 20th century through the microcosm of Detroit. As he said, "Detroit is the one city whose history mirrors precisely the history of the United States of America." He also wrote many other books yet, despite winning awards, most of his work is out of print already. The Detroit series is now available in eBook form and I plan to read all of them.
April 28, 2015
This was one of those books you pick up for the heck of it on your way out of the library. You didn't go in for it, but you walk out with it. It's like going to the grocery store for one or two things, but 200 dollars later, your basket is full.
I liked this book. It was set during prohibition times in Detroit. So of course there were bootleggers which I always find fun because I have bootleggers in my family tree. Albeit, not very good ones because my family members spent time in a state penitentiary.
In some places this read like a non-fiction account. That was a little different. I liked the MC. He was a strong character and he was able to carry the story. There were times though, where it felt like he was suffering from too much perfection.
I also liked the language. The dialog was well written. There was some slang used, which I can appreciate when it is authentic to the time. It is also appreciated that when it is used, the author doesn't spend the next 2 sentences explaining the meaning of it. I always roll my eyes when authors use slang, then feel the need to explain it to us mere mortals.
I didn't care for the number of characters in this. There were so many people, the stage doors were constantly revolving.
I liked this book. It was set during prohibition times in Detroit. So of course there were bootleggers which I always find fun because I have bootleggers in my family tree. Albeit, not very good ones because my family members spent time in a state penitentiary.
In some places this read like a non-fiction account. That was a little different. I liked the MC. He was a strong character and he was able to carry the story. There were times though, where it felt like he was suffering from too much perfection.
I also liked the language. The dialog was well written. There was some slang used, which I can appreciate when it is authentic to the time. It is also appreciated that when it is used, the author doesn't spend the next 2 sentences explaining the meaning of it. I always roll my eyes when authors use slang, then feel the need to explain it to us mere mortals.
I didn't care for the number of characters in this. There were so many people, the stage doors were constantly revolving.
August 24, 2014
The first novel in the 'Detroit Crime Series' in which the city is treated as an organic entity through various decades of the 20th century, "WHISKEY RIVER" spans from the Prohibition Era to the late 1930s.
Constantine ("Connie") Minor is a Detroit-based journalist who has made a name for himself covering the crime beat in the late 1920s/early 1930s. This was a time in which bootleggers and mobsters carved out Detroit into spheres of influence over which they exerted and established firm control over, not only, the illegal importation of alcohol, but also the numbers rackets, and prostitution. Many of the city's cops often looked the other way, picking and choosing what crimes to solve or ignore (courtesy of a bribe). All the while, Detroit's industrial might (as evidenced by the auto industry) continued to grow, giving the city a dazzling prosperity soon to be tempered by the ravages of the 1929 stock market crash and resulting Depression.
Minor has cultivated a variety of contacts with the city's underworld elements (e.g. Jack Dance, a bold and impetuous bootlegger building his own criminal empire in the city and "Joey the Machine" a powerful and ruthless criminal overlord who will tolerate no challenges to his authority). He brings the reader into the frenzied, at times dangerous, chaotic and colorful lives of the crime bosses, syndicates, police and politicians.
One of the most exciting scenes in the novel is when Minor accompanies Jack Dance and his associates over to Canada one night to pick up several cases of alcohol and convey them back to Detroit across the stretches of the frozen-over Detroit River during the winter of 1930. Amid a flurry of machine gun fire, they barely evade the Prohibition Squad of the Detroit Police Department. In Minor's own words: "... bullets were still hitting the ice. As we sped away from the Packard, having veered too close to its gun for comfort, I watched the battered black Lincoln following our original path with Lon Camarillo standing on the running board, bracing himself with an arm hooked around the window post and pumping away with what looked like a Browning Automatic Rifle at the center of the network of cracks. His face in the moonlight with the buttstock against his cheek looked like the Grim Reaper's...
"... The driver of the Packard was spinning his wheels in a white blur now, frantic to back away onto a better footing. His engine whined, but the car only subsided into a drunken tilt, spoiling the aim of the gunner in back and thrusting its armored prow farther out over the shoal.
"A wheel broke through, the car stumbled, then went down on both knees as the ice collapsed under the other front wheel. White floes stood up in shards and slid under the black water. The Packard teetered, rear wheels turning in empty air, a scaled-down Titanic suspended on a cloud of exhaust."
All in all, a very exciting, well-crafted novel.
Constantine ("Connie") Minor is a Detroit-based journalist who has made a name for himself covering the crime beat in the late 1920s/early 1930s. This was a time in which bootleggers and mobsters carved out Detroit into spheres of influence over which they exerted and established firm control over, not only, the illegal importation of alcohol, but also the numbers rackets, and prostitution. Many of the city's cops often looked the other way, picking and choosing what crimes to solve or ignore (courtesy of a bribe). All the while, Detroit's industrial might (as evidenced by the auto industry) continued to grow, giving the city a dazzling prosperity soon to be tempered by the ravages of the 1929 stock market crash and resulting Depression.
Minor has cultivated a variety of contacts with the city's underworld elements (e.g. Jack Dance, a bold and impetuous bootlegger building his own criminal empire in the city and "Joey the Machine" a powerful and ruthless criminal overlord who will tolerate no challenges to his authority). He brings the reader into the frenzied, at times dangerous, chaotic and colorful lives of the crime bosses, syndicates, police and politicians.
One of the most exciting scenes in the novel is when Minor accompanies Jack Dance and his associates over to Canada one night to pick up several cases of alcohol and convey them back to Detroit across the stretches of the frozen-over Detroit River during the winter of 1930. Amid a flurry of machine gun fire, they barely evade the Prohibition Squad of the Detroit Police Department. In Minor's own words: "... bullets were still hitting the ice. As we sped away from the Packard, having veered too close to its gun for comfort, I watched the battered black Lincoln following our original path with Lon Camarillo standing on the running board, bracing himself with an arm hooked around the window post and pumping away with what looked like a Browning Automatic Rifle at the center of the network of cracks. His face in the moonlight with the buttstock against his cheek looked like the Grim Reaper's...
"... The driver of the Packard was spinning his wheels in a white blur now, frantic to back away onto a better footing. His engine whined, but the car only subsided into a drunken tilt, spoiling the aim of the gunner in back and thrusting its armored prow farther out over the shoal.
"A wheel broke through, the car stumbled, then went down on both knees as the ice collapsed under the other front wheel. White floes stood up in shards and slid under the black water. The Packard teetered, rear wheels turning in empty air, a scaled-down Titanic suspended on a cloud of exhaust."
All in all, a very exciting, well-crafted novel.
July 8, 2017
Simply wonderful.
Being a recent transplant to the Detroit area I have attempted to experience all things Detroit. When doing research I came across this book and thought I would try it. I am so happy I did. This is one of the most vivid books I have had the pleasure to read and have been telling everyone who will listen about it. I won't give any spoilers, but if you have any interest in true gangsters or prohibition of Detroit get this book, you will not be disappointed.
Being a recent transplant to the Detroit area I have attempted to experience all things Detroit. When doing research I came across this book and thought I would try it. I am so happy I did. This is one of the most vivid books I have had the pleasure to read and have been telling everyone who will listen about it. I won't give any spoilers, but if you have any interest in true gangsters or prohibition of Detroit get this book, you will not be disappointed.
June 24, 2021
RATING: 3.25
September 22, 2022
I have an interest in Michigan-centric and Detroit-centric literature, but haven’t read much of Loren D. Estleman’s ouvre. I’m beginning to correct that oversight. This novel is a good place to start.
Detroit in the 1920s was a center of American industry and wealth. It was also a hick town, lacking in political and social leadership, where prominent citizens like Henry Ford were innovative industrialists but not much concerned with the welfare of society at large. Politically, the city was entirely compromised and corrupt.
The 1920s were also the time of Prohibition, and Detroit is ideal situated for smuggling liquor, as it’s only a river’s width away from Windsor, Canada. Fast boats in the summer and car caravans across ice in the winter brought to booze to Detroit.
Where there’s money to be made from illegal activity, gang rivalries and violence are inevitable.
This all forms a great canvas for Whiskey River. The novel is narrated by Constance (Connie) Minor, whose connections as a newspaper man gain access to the underworld for him as a neutral observer. Connie eventually builds his journalistic reputation around his underworld connections, and is on hand for much of the action.
It’s a good novel. As far as I can tell, the historical backdrop is accurate, though the primary characters are fictional. I enjoyed the inside look at the lawlessness engendered by the misguided Prohibition laws, which most of society flouted. My previous experience of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang was limited to the reference to the rhythm section in Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock.” The novel fleshed out my understanding.
It’s not easy, I’d guess, to write fiction constrained by actual locations, people, and events of a defined historical era. Whiskey River rises to the challenge.
Detroit in the 1920s was a center of American industry and wealth. It was also a hick town, lacking in political and social leadership, where prominent citizens like Henry Ford were innovative industrialists but not much concerned with the welfare of society at large. Politically, the city was entirely compromised and corrupt.
The 1920s were also the time of Prohibition, and Detroit is ideal situated for smuggling liquor, as it’s only a river’s width away from Windsor, Canada. Fast boats in the summer and car caravans across ice in the winter brought to booze to Detroit.
Where there’s money to be made from illegal activity, gang rivalries and violence are inevitable.
This all forms a great canvas for Whiskey River. The novel is narrated by Constance (Connie) Minor, whose connections as a newspaper man gain access to the underworld for him as a neutral observer. Connie eventually builds his journalistic reputation around his underworld connections, and is on hand for much of the action.
It’s a good novel. As far as I can tell, the historical backdrop is accurate, though the primary characters are fictional. I enjoyed the inside look at the lawlessness engendered by the misguided Prohibition laws, which most of society flouted. My previous experience of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang was limited to the reference to the rhythm section in Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock.” The novel fleshed out my understanding.
It’s not easy, I’d guess, to write fiction constrained by actual locations, people, and events of a defined historical era. Whiskey River rises to the challenge.
November 1, 2016
If you like your noir not only hard-boiled but scorched to the bottom of the pot, it you like L.A. Confidential taken beyond Ellroy's simplistic story, if you like The Untouchables, Whiskey River is for you. This is Detroit during Prohibition and it is wild. I have no idea how many people Estleman kills off but it's a bunch. And they don't go lightly: machine guns, bombs, garrote, knifings, attached to a car battery and thrown in the river. You name, they did it.
One thing about this book that makes it interesting and a bit unsettling is the language. Estleman must have had every flapper book and history of Detroit memorized when he wrote this because he soaks the story in local history. But, for 1990s book he chose to speak in 1930s language. It is very distracting at times and you have to be prepared that in those days slang and racism abound on every level of society. Sometimes he doesn't seem to be above the fray even as a first-person narrator when describing what he sees.
On the other hand, this is a well-told story. I like the twists and turns and uncovering of big hearts and hard hearts. I don't think I would have wanted to live in Detroit in the early 30s.
One thing about this book that makes it interesting and a bit unsettling is the language. Estleman must have had every flapper book and history of Detroit memorized when he wrote this because he soaks the story in local history. But, for 1990s book he chose to speak in 1930s language. It is very distracting at times and you have to be prepared that in those days slang and racism abound on every level of society. Sometimes he doesn't seem to be above the fray even as a first-person narrator when describing what he sees.
On the other hand, this is a well-told story. I like the twists and turns and uncovering of big hearts and hard hearts. I don't think I would have wanted to live in Detroit in the early 30s.
September 15, 2013
Having never read Michigan author Loren Estleman and being interested in the history of the Detroit underworld, I decided to give this one a shot. By using an authentic sounding narrative tone and mixing in actual events and people with his fictitious cast, the author creates an engaging story. It was easy to imagine the atmosphere of Prohibition Era Detroit. I was always fascinated by my mother's accounts of playing upstairs with all of the other kids at her "uncle's house" when her parents were downstairs visiting the speakeasy or blind pig as it was known in Detroit. I may be compelled to read more of this author's books!
September 10, 2014
Possibly Estleman's best work, in a career that is knee deep in "bests".
September 4, 2025
YES! A crime/detective novel that's written beautifully and intelligently.
This story was kind of like if Stephen King wrote a crime book set in the 1930s. It was character-driven, complex, and written extremely well. Estleman has jumped up near the top of my list and I am excited to read more.
Living right across the river, I'm a sucker for anything related to Detroit, so this was right up my alley. There were tons of mentions of Windsor in this one and a great spin on a time period that was very real.
Six more books in Estleman's 'Detroit' series? I'm in!
This story was kind of like if Stephen King wrote a crime book set in the 1930s. It was character-driven, complex, and written extremely well. Estleman has jumped up near the top of my list and I am excited to read more.
Living right across the river, I'm a sucker for anything related to Detroit, so this was right up my alley. There were tons of mentions of Windsor in this one and a great spin on a time period that was very real.
Six more books in Estleman's 'Detroit' series? I'm in!
January 13, 2019
Wow, what a story! Set in Detroit during the height of prohibition! The action never stops! A sad commentary on the lives of men whose sole purpose is greed and power. They ultimately bleed and die, too, and most times prematurely, via a bullet! I loved the main character, Connie Minor, whose reputation as an unbiased newspaperman, landed him in a precarious position between the heads of two bootlegging gangs who both trusted him just enough to propel him into some pretty dicey situations!
June 21, 2019
Very disappointed 😔 I love Detroit and I love historical mysteries so when I found this author and his series about Detroit, I was so excited. However, I am very disappointed when I realized there was no plot. All that was happening was a reporter/private investigator observing the illegal activities (Prohibition-related usually) and writing his column in the newspaper. There is literally no other action/plot other than that. Smart technique by the author to aid in exposition of/for events he wants to include in his narrative - but not for the WHOLE BOOK. I got to 40% but DNF.
July 18, 2010
A very authentic look at the prohibition era in Detroit with a lot of detail concerning the city and enivrons. A confusing number of characters and dialogue made the story so involved that it was hard to keep track of everything.
November 10, 2014
This was a very entertaining and fast paced novel laced with colorful gangsters of 1930s Detroit. The story was well written and since I love anything Detroit, it gets five stars. I've already got the next book in this series on reserve at the library.
January 11, 2021
Love it
Why have I never heard of this author? I am a huge historical novel fan and this is one of the best ever. While reading I truly felt like I was riding on an old model-t holding a Thompson machine gun in my hand.
Why have I never heard of this author? I am a huge historical novel fan and this is one of the best ever. While reading I truly felt like I was riding on an old model-t holding a Thompson machine gun in my hand.
July 30, 2011
Reading this is a fun way to learn Detroit 1930's history.
October 9, 2018
The concept of this book excited me. And then I tried to read it. Couldn't do it. It's very rare I give up on a book. Not sure I'll be able to get into this one.
November 14, 2024
Far grittier than the author's more contemporary detective fiction and from a reporters first hand point of view, this early depression and prohibition era gangland story is less about our narrator the tabloid journalist and more about his fascination with an wildly impulsive violent rising young criminal with no socially redeeming characteristics but imbued with charisma at war with other gangsters. You know how it will end but it's fascinating. Set in Detroit which is a character in it's own right, at every mention of the Purple Gang I wanted to sing a few bars along with Elvis. The historical context alone is worth reading it for.
March 26, 2017
This book shows Estelman at his best, but also why he is sometimes called "the poor man's Elmore Leonard" (to be fair, Leonard, also a Michigan native, was a big booster of Estelman.) Based on actual events, the writing is action-packed and hard-boiled but he occasionally writes himself into a corner & he gets bogged down with a little too much Detroit trivia. The result is something fun to read, but not as polished as other pulp writers like Leonard or John D. McDonald.
July 19, 2025
Whiskey River is not a literary masterpiece. I gave it five stars because it is an exemplary novel for its genre. Estleman really shine with this homage to hardboiled thrillers of the thirties. The tone never falters, the patter is true to its time, and the pace is reminiscent of Hammett. The book tells the story of a fictional Detroit gangster in the early 1930's. Estleman has never been better than he is with this book.
October 11, 2025
As a born and bred Detroiter, though I haven't lived there in decades but do visit annually, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel about Prohibition Era Detroit, as author Estleman's references to Detroit streets, landmarks, history, and personalities from the 1920s and '30s peppered the entire novel. The gangsters and gang warfare were colorful, reckless, and compelling. A very entertaining book. I'll be seeking out more Estleman tales to reinforce my connections to My Old Home Town.
March 26, 2024
I was talking with my uncle last week and he mentioned Loren Estleman to me...I had never read anything by him and I was really missing out. I didn't break any land speed records, but I finished the book in just over a week and can't wait to get into the next one.
July 9, 2018
bad, really really bad
August 2, 2018
I didn't really want to read this style of book at the moment so started another bo.ok
August 5, 2019
This is historical fiction but it is so fun to read about Detroit and Windsor and what went on in the Rum running days of Al Capone driving across the frozen river etc
June 21, 2023
I like Loren Estleman, newspaper-reporter protagonists, and stories set in the 1920s/1930s, but this particular book didn't hold my interest.
November 27, 2024
Not bad.
March 19, 2025
Good, of course I loved all the early 1930s atmosphere. And as a bonus, I learned a bit about Detroit.
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