The Witchfinder

Amos Walker #12

by Loren D. Estleman

A dying architect engages Detroit PI Amos Walker to uncover someone who is spreading lies about himThe world is waiting for Jay Bell Furlong to die. The grand old man of American architecture is on deathwatch in a Los Angeles hospital, and it won’t be long before his obituary hits the front page. Only Amos Walker knows that the impending death is a bit farther off than that. In fact, Furlong has just become Walker’s client. The architect is still near death, yes, but far from the hospital. Before he goes, he has an item of revenge he wants seen to, and Walker is to be his instrument. Eight years prior, a salacious photo caused Furlong to cut loose his young lover, a photo he has now learned is a fake. He hires Walker to find out who poisoned his happiness, so that he can repay the favor before it’s too late. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

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

[Damo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amos Walker is still hard at it, scratching out a meager living in Detroit as a hard bitten gumshoe, ready with his cutting wit and pithy one-liner. This has long been a series that remains faithful to the classic PI role and Walker sticks to his case no matter what roadblocks are thrown in his way. In fact, in true Marlowe-esque fashion, the more roadblocks he encounters, the more determined he becomes.

In this outing, Amos Walker is hired by a rich and renowned, dying architect to find out who doctored up a photograph that made it appear his fiance was in bed with another man. This is something that happened many years before but the man is tying up loose ends before he dies and wants to make sure the person responsible is not someone he’s leaving money to.

As with many of these types of cases, what starts out as a few queries about a photograph suddenly blossoms into the catalyst for murder. In this case it blossoms into the catalyst for two murders.

What might otherwise be a simple and straightforward PI case is made far more interesting by the way in which Walker goes about it. His quick one-liners are sharp and clever, his ability to cut to the heart of the matter ensures things move along at a rapid pace and disregard for his own safety, while not total disregard, means that the action is swift at all times.

Sometimes it’s easy to be distracted by the minutia noticed by Walker during the course of his investigation. Because the story is narrated in the first person from his perspective, we get the full report of what he sees. This includes the full rundown of every scrap of clothing worn by each person he encounters, the cleanliness or otherwise of rooms he walks into and the random musings of inanimate objects and their place in the world.

Just as an example, here’s a typical riff that seems to crop up in each book, this one’s about, of all things, stairs.

“You can tell a lot about a building by its stairs. There are stairs between green-painted plaster walls fretted with graffiti and paved with rubber speckled with cigarette burns like suppurating sores, lighted (when they are lighted at all) by dusty fifteen-watt bulbs that illuminate only themselves and the shrunken pupils of the human animals that live in their shadows; glossy black-painted iron stairs cast in lacy patterns, rising like smoke through the middle of clean bright rooms full of new merchandise…clean, pine-smelling stairs in new buildings full of their future; dirty shuddery garbage-stinking stairs in old buildings emptied by their past; stairs that serve as bathrooms; stairs that serve no purpose at all; cold echoing penitentiary stairs painted gray; crowded chattering schoolhouse stairs too trafficked to paint; stairs to go up but not down, stairs to go down but not up, stairs on the inside to take you to something, stairs on the outside to take you away from something else.”

He then finishes the sidetracked musing with the remark: “Any reliable detectives’ handbook should include a chapter on stairs.”

This type of belabouring of a random point is typical Amos Walker and crops up from time to time to remind us of the sharpness of his mind and the kind of thinking that will eventually deliver him to some kind of breakthrough in his cases. Oh, and I find it kind of amusing too.

So, once again, the hardboiled PI struts his stuff in Detroit, this time in the oppressive heat of summer. He manages to annoy the various local police forces, picks up another scar or two and solves a strange and unusual case without much improving his bank balance. I found this 12th book in the series to be one of the stronger books in the Amos Walker series.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loren Estleman’s irascible Detroit based detective Amos Walker is the classic hard boiled gumshoe with his dumpy office, skimpy wardrobe, meager bank account and endless sarcasm. This offering, volume 12 (originally published in 1999) in a long series, has plenty of snappy dialog, one-liners and the prerequisite colorful cast of characters. The slightly seedy plot is a good match for the genre but the complex conclusion is a bit of a stretch. This is good stuff for fans of old school detective noir.

[David DeValera · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are so many one-liners in this book you could squash a pack mule under their combined weight. The main character, Amos Walker, is a heavyweight prose puncher and a verbal jujitsu master. He says the kind of things you write down on 3 x 5 cards and study before parties. Jab and punch phrases like, "He is so rich that the amount of his property taxes alone would keep the Third World in rice and prayer rugs for the next decade." Not a direct quote, but something close; you kinda make em' your own after a while because Amos Walker is your friend and you know he won't mind.

The one-liners distract a little, but they don't disguise how smart Amos is. He notices everything, and as Hard-Boiled fiction fate would have it, the smallest details hold the most significant revelations. This is a Motor City mystery and Estleman details Detroit city life with quick, sour sketches equal in both wit and malice to Chandler's descriptions of Los Angeles.

Amos is an old-school detective: He pours his own drinks-—straight-up, packs simple heat--concealed; he's tougher than a 99 cent steak--well done, and he is never more than two phone calls away from finding out anything needing finding out. If you've gone a few rounds with the likes of Chandler, Hammett, Parker or Leonard, than at least come ringside with Estleman because he can go the distance.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a typical Amos Walker novel by Loren D. Estleman. I like his dialogue, find myself skimming through passages of extended metaphors and similes. Having read his Valentino series, I suddenly find this series a little flatter.

[Calvin Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just what a hard-boiled detective some should be.

[Dave Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget the mystery, come here for the prose, setting and characters; they are that good.

[Doris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but it came across as too pompous, too pedestrian, and too filled with cliches. The main character was too much like the old time hard man - unless its meant to be a spoof and it fails there too because it isn't funny.

To give you an idea - I used it to help me fall asleep. Several times. I had even forgotten I hadn't finished it, then when I did finally pick it up to return to the library stack, realized it still had a bookmark, and proceeded to finish reading it, my only reactions were "not surprised" at the guilty party, or the reasons. The only surprise was the shoot up of the century old cars.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The excellent reviews sucker me into reading an Estleman novel about once a decade. I hope I’ve finally learned my lesson. The plot and characters are utterly pedestrian, and the protagonist’s constant cynicism and condescension are boring. It is easy to look down on everything. It is rare to find their value. This is a worthless book.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my normal type of book but I can listen to any genre on audio. This book was a pretty good detective story featuring love, lies, murder, and betrayal. What else could it possibly need?!

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining PI novel featuring a Detroit investigator who is the master of the one-liner and must have one of the hardest skulls ever since he always takes a pretty good beating in the books.

[Rachel Winstead · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The world's black and white, good and bad, no matter what you hear. The people who say it isn't have already chosen black."

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#12 in the Amos Walker series.

Amos Walker novel - noted architect, on his deathbed, hires Walker to find out who sabotaged his final romance eight years ago.

[Laurie Stoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay but I would not go out of my way to read more in this series.