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.



The second installment of Estleman's Detroit trilogy ( Whiskey River ) is terrific: fast, intricate and often funny. Choreographing the movements leading to the August 1966 Detroit riots, Estleman focuses on three main characters: Rick Amery, an ex-cop hired to spy on a Ralph Nader-like consumer advocate; inspector Lew Canada, trying to prevent a war between the Mafia and black gangs, and a likely race riot; and Quincy Springfield, numbers racketeer and "blind pig" (after-hours club) operator. But the author does not stint on minor characters, and they, too, leap off the page. A crippled mob boss resolves to oust "the coloreds" from the rackets while his exiled father schemes to reclaim the family business; there's also a retired newsman right off The Front Page , plus a Jimmy Hoffa-type labor leader. Set pieces are no less than stunning, notably a publicity stunt to embarrass GM chairman James Roche, and a big black funeral. Period details work wonderfully as well: the clothes, cars, songs, political references, even the price of lamb chops at the A & P are right on the money.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.



This final volume in Estleman's Detroit trilogy (after Whiskey River and Motown ) is a superb thriller that may cause an uproar in America's sixth-largest city. Doc Miller, once an ace reliever for the Tigers, is sprung after seven years in prison, a sentence he earned when a guest at a party he threw OD'ed on cocaine. Fat, flamboyant bail bondsman Maynard Ance offers six-foot-five Doc a job as escort while Ance goes after a skipped client, Wilson McCoy (last seen in Motown). McCoy, former Black Panther and leader of the Marshals of Mahomet--"revolutionaries" who raise money by selling drugs--eventually turns up a suicide. Accepting Ance's offer of full-time employment, Doc is plunged into an intricate series of events in a fast-moving narrative that veers from a black funeral to a fancy fund-raiser, with danger at every turn. The pleasure of the intricate plot is enhanced by the cast of vivid ? colorful an awk adj to use in describing a multiracial castgood point! characters, led by Ance, who likens a pesky reporter to "a prostate the size of Ohio." Other players include a genteel black former madam who knows where all the bodies are buried, Mahomet's elegant widow, and some ballplaying Marshals who run dope. Real-life Mayor Coleman Young is depicted in the last chapter as the owner of a crack house. As in the earlier Detroit books, the climax here is violent, the denouement cynical. Estleman, who also writes the Amos Walker mysteries, knows and somehow still loves Detroit, not unlike its other bard, Elmore Leonard.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.



For Minor, who had a colorful, thriving career as a newspaper man twenty years earlier, a last chance to make it big - or take a big fall - has come from Henry Ford II and his new brainchild, the Edsel. Shrouded in secrecy, the E-car is to compete with Cadillac and make Ford Motor Company the number one shop in town...and the world. Minor's job? Sell it to America. Although Minor has his doubts about this car (especially that strange grille), he knows how to make an advertising pitch. But before he can start, he's hit with a hardball proposition from union leader Walter Reuther and a zealous politician looking for pinkos in Detroit's bizarre pro wrestling circuit. Bouncing back and forth between two women - one half his age and the other twice as smart - Connie does what he does best and dives into the Detroit underworld of mobsters, molls, wrestlers, and ex-cops. And finds someone with deadly plans for Henry II's grand dream.



S.T.R.E.S.S. might be Detroit's elite police undercover squad, but to black rookie cop Charlie Battle, it's nothing less than an execution squad targeting blacks. As Battle tries to walk the thin blue line between supporting his fellow officers and his own racial pride, he is compelled to speak out in a police department where talking against the squad may be the ultimate crime.



A Tough Town In A Tough Time -- Detroit during World War II was where the United States' furious effort to out-manufacture the Germans and Japanese occurred. Industry imported workers to replace men gone to war -- Southern whites and blacks working side by side fo the first time. Detroit had it all: rationing, the black-market, the Mafia, fortunes to be made, a new kind of jazz for seething summer nights -- it was a powder keg.

Through this tense, troubled world cuts a killer, a self-appointed soldier savaging ordinary people, the elderly and the defenseless. Lieutenant Zagreb's most important job is to keep the city from exploding, then to catch a mad killer with a cop roster of 4Fs and near-retirees. And finally, he must save his own soul. He cannot succeed at all three.

Wartime Detroit is dazzingly recreated in Loren Estleman's latest tour de force crime novel. Great auto manufacturers labor mightily; blacks struggle for an economic toehold; whites strive for decent lives in the chaos. The climax, during America's nastiest race riots, is unforgettable.



Thunder City presents Detroit in the process of becoming the Motor City. Harlan Crownover, scion of a great family of carriage makers, battles with his father to invest in a company run by Henry Ford, who has failed twice before in the automobile business. Desperate for funds, Harlan turns to Big .

Jim Dolan, the Midwest's most powerful political boss, and Sal Borneo, a visionary mafioso struggling to bring the commerce of vice into the new century. Allies at first, they soon will be mortal enemies. At the crisis, only Edith Hampton Crownover, Harlan's troubled, aristocratic mother, will be in a position to shift the balance of power.