Amos Walker Explained

Amos Walker
First:	Motor City Blue
Creator:	Loren D. Estleman
Gender:	Male
Occupation:	Private detective
Nationality:	American

Amos Walker is a fictional private detective in a series of more than thirty novels and short stories written over the course of five decades by Loren D. Estleman.^[1] Publishers Weekly has called author Estleman "arguably the finest [living] practitioner of hard-boiled private eye fiction with his Amos Walker novels,"^[2] and the series has won multiple Shamus Awards from the Private-Eye Writers of America (PWA), including a Lifetime Achievement Award for the author.

Walker works in Detroit and lives on the Detroit-Hamtramck border. A Vietnam veteran^[3] who boxed in college and served as a military policeman, he is sharp and streetwise. Like all good private investigators, Amos has an independent and pugnacious streak: While still in the police academy, he was fired from the Detroit Police for punching out a creepy but connected fellow cadet in the shower. On his first appearance, in Motor City Blue (set around 1980), Amos is in his thirties, and he ages over the course of subsequent novels.^[4]

Amos Walker is a traditionalist. As one reviewer noted:

The Thrilling Detective website stated:

Bibliography

1. Motor City Blue
2. Angel Eyes
3. The Midnight Man
4. The Glass Highway
5. Sugartown
6. Every Brilliant Eye
7. Lady Yesterday
8. Downriver
9. General Murders: Amos Walker Mysteries (1988; ten short stories)
10. Silent Thunder
11. Sweet Women Lie (1990)
12. Never Street
13. The Witchfinder
14. The Hours of the Virgin
15. A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
16. Sinister Heights
17. Poison Blonde
18. Retro (2004)
19. Nicotine Kiss (2006)
20. American Detective (2007)
21. Left-handed Dollar (2010)
22. (2010; short stories)
23. Infernal Angels (2011)
24. Burning Midnight (2012)
25. Don't Look for Me (2014)
26. You Know Who Killed Me (2014)
27. The Sundown Speech (2015)
28. The Lioness Is the Hunter (2017)
29. Black and White Ball (2018)
30. When Old Midnight Comes Along (2019)
31. Cutthroat Dogs (2021)
32. Monkey in the Middle (2022)
33. City Walls (2023)

Further reading

• Estleman, Loren D. [text] and Monte Nagler [photographs] (2007). Amos Walker's Detroit. Wayne State University Press, Detroit. . "It's a hard-boiled town," writes Estleman of Detroit in his preface, "made to order for a remaindered knight chasing truth through a maze of threats, deceptions, and inconvenient corpses. City and protagonist are cut from the same coarse cloth. They are the series' two heroes."

Notes and References

1. Web site: SINISTER HEIGHTS: An Amos Walker Novel . Publishers Weekly. December 18, 2017.
2. Publishers Weekly, October 1, 1989. "Review: Peeper". "Estleman, arguably the finest practitioner of hard-boiled private eye fiction with his Amos Walker novels, shifts gears in his latest offering." Retrieved July 1, 2023.
3. Web site: Amos Walker Novels. Macmillan. December 18, 2017.
4. Web site: Geiger. Mia. Book Review: Infernal Angels. AARP. October 20, 2011. December 18, 2017.