When Old Midnight Comes Along: An Amos Walker Mystery

At the start of Edgar-finalist Estleman’s stellar 28th Amos Walker mystery (after 2018’s Black and White Ball), the Detroit PI is retained by Francis X. Lawes, a local government official in charge of insuring procurement integrity, to find out what happened to his PR consultant wife, Paula. After Paula went missing six years earlier, her car was found abandoned in a bad neighborhood. She’s widely believed to have been murdered, but Lawes, who’s looking to remarry, is hoping for conclusive evidence she’s dead. Walker learns that the police inquiry into the disappearance was handled by an old friend of his, John Alderdyce, who recently retired from the force. Alderdyce always believed that Lawes was behind his wife’s murder, but he was never able to prove it. The plot thickens when Walker learns that the first police officer to find Paula’s vehicle was gunned down soon afterward. Chandler and Hammett fans will feel right at home on the mean streets of Estleman’s Detroit. [em]Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Dec.) [/em]