Detroit P.I. Amos Walker returns in his 19th full-length case in Loren D. Estleman’s AMERICAN DETECTIVE.

It begins on a simple note: Darius Fuller, retired Major League Baseball pitcher, has an adult daughter who will be gaining control of a trust fund in two months. She’s been dating a man her father thinks is a heel and dollar-chaser, and he wants Walker to talk the guy into accepting $50,000 to get out of the young woman’s life. Fuller is on the edge of financial ruin – that pesky IRS – but he has squirreled away some undeclared cash for emergencies.

When Walker shows up at the guy’s apartment, he finds a corpse awaiting him, with the police curious and wanting to know what he’s doing there.

The cast of suspects continues to expand with the addition of an Asian gambling lord; a local unionizing tough guy; his gargantuan bodyguards – one of whom, named Elron because his mother was a Scientologist, Walker likes in spite of himself; a sexy real estate agent who is more than she appears to be; a bent rent-a-cop; and a female Evil Genius from Asia who worked her way up from sex slave to Sumuru.

With each extra cast member, Walker finds a new suspect. People neither he nor you took seriously in one chapter turn deadly in the next, and bodies hit the floor faster than spilled popcorn in a movie theater. And as the true nature of the crime becomes clearer, the greed that Walker thought was the motivation changes to something far worse.

What I found most interesting about the book was Walker’s – and I assume Estleman’s – genuine anger at what decades of corrupt government and uncaring industry have done to Detroit. Walker usually finds time in each case to give us descriptions of what the once-proud Motor City has devolved into, but this time the wit of Estleman’s prose has become truly bitter, the sarcasm of Walker’s wisecracks straining to be heard through clenched teeth.

As always, Estleman delivers a solid P.I. novel. Walker maintains his place at the head of the table where the big boy descendants of Raymond Chandler sit, and AMERICAN DETECTIVE is a must-read for all fans of its genre. –Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.