Loren D. Estleman is a writer most famous for his 20 Amos Walker, PI books and this is a collection of 33 Walker short stories. Publishers Weekly puts him just below Chandler, Hammett, and MacDonald and people whose opinions I respect greeted the release of this collection with effervescent praise. One weekend, the Kindle edition of the book was offered for free, so I snatched it up. Now, I'm happy I got it for free.
It started out well enough with a story called "Greektown". The setting painted a nice picture of Detroit, the language and dialogue were punchy, and the story had a nice hook. Walker was hired by the owner of a Greek restaurant to find his half brother - a man he thinks is behind the murders of several young women around town. The story rolled along pretty nicely until Walker made a deductive leap as to why the half-brother did what he did. His conclusion was not supported by any clues I noticed planted throughout the story.
I noticed this leap in several other stories. As I kept reading the collection, the punchy dialogue I liked so much started to feel forced and out of place. Now, there are some good stories in the part of the book I read, but for the most part the stories were "meh" or worse (I stopped reading about halfway through the book).
I'll read a couple more stories in here if I have time and nothing else to read, but I won't be devoting much of my reading time to it. If the second half of the book changes my opinion, I'll post an update. But for now, I can't recommend it.
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