Loren D Estleman

"Paperback Jack is a brand new historical thriller from Grand Master Loren D. Estleman: lurid paperback covers promised sex and danger, but what went on behind the scenes was nearly as spicy as the adventures between the covers. 1946. Fresh from the War in Europe, hack writer Jacob Heppleman discovers a changed world back home. The pulp magazines he used to write for are dying, replaced by a revolutionary new publishing racket: paperback novels, offering...

Amos Walker is hired by Francis X. Lawes, a private-sector mover and shaker in Detroit politics, to prove that his wife, Paula, who disappeared under sinister circumstances more than six years ago, is dead. Francis wants to remarry without having to wait for the seven-year declaration-of-death rule to kick in. Walker's investigation is complicated by two facts: the police still consider Lawes the prime suspect, and the first-responding officer in...

"As the smoke from Canadian wildfires chokes Detroit, PI Amos Walker is tasked with investigating a fatal hit-and-run. The victim is Spencer Bennett, a junior law associate with the Waterford Group, and he supposedly had a file of confidential documents on him when he died. But those documents have now gone missing, and the firm is dead set on Walker finding them. As Walker digs deeper into the events leading to Bennett's death, all signs are pointing...

The black heart of a seemingly stable well-run city is pitched into violence and chaos when a serial killer's rampage pits the police chief, a mafia boss and the press against each other.

Enter Valentino, a mild-mannered UCLA film archivist, who buys a decrepit movie palace and uncovers a skeleton in the secret Prohibition basement. He then makes a second discovery: long-lost, priceless, reels of film: Erich von Stroheim's infamous Greed. The LAPD wants to take the reels as evidence, jeopardizing the precious old film.

""Loren Estleman is my hero." --Harlan Coben. Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places represents forty years of suspense writing in the short form. Previously published in a host of magazines and anthologies, with a new Preface and introductions to the stories written especially for this collection, these eighteen tales feature gangsters, private eyes, psychotic killers, hitmen, feuding families, prostitutes, prizefighters, bodyguards,...

Hired by former Detroit Tigers pitcher Darius Fuller to break up his daughter's romance with Hilary Bairn, a presumed fortune-hunter, Amos Walker gets more than he bargained for when Fuller's daughter turns up dead.

Hangman Oscar Stone is a master executioner, who prides himself on his careful and exacting work, until a sudden moment of realization and devastating truth forces him to come to terms with himself and his profession.

"Film detective Valentino is summoned to the estate of Ignacio Bozel to collect a prized donation to the university's movie library: Bleak Street, a film from the classic noir period, thought lost for more than sixty years. Bleak Street was never released. Its star, Van Oliver, a gifted and charismatic actor with alleged ties to the mob, disappeared while the project was in post-production, presumably murdered by gangland rivals: another one of Hollywood's...

Targeted by suspicious fires and bottle bombs for attempting to extract a relative from a Mexican town gang, Amos Walker struggles to forge peace between two rival gangs only to discover ties to an international conspiracy.