From Publishers Weekly
Amos Walker, Detroit PI, revisits the past in the 13th entry in an estimable hard-boiled series (The Witchfinder, etc.). In the echoing, nearly empty galleries of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Walker agrees to accompany a curator on a private mission to recover a recently stolen medieval illuminated manuscript, the Hours of the title. But in the rundown skin-flick theater where the transaction is to take place, Walker is distracted by a young woman and then shot at. The curator, his package, the woman and shooter disappear. The woman turns out to be the young wife ("she was pushing twenty but not hard enough to dent it") of the theater owner, a notorious and wealthy porn kingAand rare book collectorAconfined to a wheelchair. Also involved in the shooting is Earl North, the man who killed Walker's beloved first boss, Dale Leopold, 20 years before, a crime for which North went free. Vivid memories of Leopold combine with the debilitating effects of the flu and midwinter in Motor City to keep Walker on a bitter edge until, the flu broken and a connection between crimes old and new made, readers are led to the fitting conclusion. Like all Estleman offerings, this one comes with extraordinarily observant narration, intelligent dialogue, memorable charactersAand style to spare. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Detroit private eye Amos Walker acts as bodyguard during a blackmail transaction involving a 15th-century illuminated manuscript. During the exchange, however, someone tries to kill him. Quality stuff, sure to be in demand. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
Estleman's skill at inhabiting multiple time frames brings a mournful perspective to a case that opens on a classy note...


From AudioFile
When Detroit Private Investigator Amos Walker agrees to help retrieve a priceless medieval illuminated manuscript called "The Hours of the Virgin," he expects the job to be routine and short-lived. However, when someone tries to kill him and corpses start turning up, he realizes that the case has ties to the unsolved murder of his partner twenty years before. Kenneth delivers a fully voiced performance that isn't always successful. The voice of Amos Walker is good, but differentiating some of the other characters is difficult at times because of the similarity of voices. But the voice of Strangeways, supposedly British/South African, misses the mark entirely and comes off sounding more akin to German. The plot is intriguing, with plenty of twists and turns captured nicely by Kenneth, who varies the pacing and injects just the right note of excitement and drama to keep the listener tuned in. S.S.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Art consultant Harold Boyette discovers that nine pages of an ancient manuscript have been stolen from his studio. The thief wants $100,000 for their return. Boyette is willing to pay the ransom--from his own pocket--but wants backup. He hires private investigator Amos Walker to handle the exchange, which takes place in a porno movie house. Shots are fired, and Boyette and the cash disappear. Walker's investigation takes him deep into the Motor City's art world as well as its pornography industry. Walker is not sure which is more ruthless; both are definitely a threat to his continued existence. Walker is the classic private eye: he smokes too much, drinks too much, lives inside himself too much, and is too cynical to ever believe in love. The cliched surface hides a consistently complex character who reveals subtle growth in each series installment, and Estleman's luminescent prose brings life to Detroit's mean streets. Wes Lukowsky


From Kirkus Reviews
Amos Walker's Detroit, always bleak, has now dropped down in class to a virtual wasteland. Or maybe it's just that Walker himself, in his 13th outing (The Witchfinder, 1998, etc.), returns to us suffering terminal weltschmerz. Oh, he goes through the motions. When Merlin Gilly, who once knew important people, touts a job, Walker does check it outeven a disgruntled, complaining, world-weary p.i. has to eatbut his energy gauge is hovering over empty. At any rate, he meets with Harold Boyette, consultant to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and hears about The Hours of the Virgin. This gorgeous piece of 15th-century illuminated manuscript has been heisted, and Boyette wants it back. He says he's been contacted by the Virgin-napper, wholl let it be ransomed for $100,000, which Boyette is more than willing to pay. Walker's job is to ride shotgun and make sure the exchange takes place smoothly. If all goes well, he gets ten grand. Predictably, all does not go well. Somebody takes a shot at Walker, Boyette disappears, ditto the ransom money. It turns out more is involved for Walker than a botched assignment, and pretty soon he finds himself investigating the 20-year-old murder of his partner, a crime to which the Virgin is (rather tenuously) connected. Eventually, Walker does get around to collecting his villain, but the manhunt drags, sags, and lags while the famous Estleman dialogue generates hardly a crackle. The line between hard-boiled and curmudgeonly is thin, but the p.i. who crosses it leaves his charisma behind. Walker might need another hiatus. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In a little tin office in the heart of this city, Amos Walker holds on to his dignity, his memories, and his way of doing business. Then he gets a case that brings all three together in a collision that would do the Ford Freeway proud.. "A slick art expert hires Walker to bodyguard a blackmail transaction involving a priceless work: a long-missing piece of fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript called the Hours of the Virgin. The exchange is set for a downtown porn theater. And it might have all gone according to plan if a beautiful woman with mismatched eyes hadn't sat down next to Walker in the dark, while someone tried to kill him from behind.. "Now the Hours of the Virgin is loose somewhere in Detroit. And while Walker looks for the manuscript he is pulled back through the darkest chapters of his own past, to the shooting death of his partner twenty years before. With a crippled billionaire pornographer, a trophy wife, and a white-collar criminal all key players in the case. Walker suddenly realizes he has a chance to get his hands on not only a priceless work of art but a gun that will put a murderer behind bars. All Walker has to do is grovel, duck, lie, steal, and kill - and do each better than the people who are out to do the same to him.

FROM THE CRITICS

Forbes

There are murders and attempted murders, and old and new crimes are intriguingly connected. A superb, can't-put-it-down read. If Charles Dickens had attempted to write mysteries, Estleman's oeuvre would have been the result.

Marilyn Stasio

Estleman's skill in inhabiting multiple time frames brings a mournful perspective to a case that opens on a classy notewith the disappearance of a curator of medieval art and an illuminated manuscript in his care. —The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Mystery fans who think that Estleman's novels about the Detroit-based PI Amos Walker (returned after a seven-year retirement in 1997's Never Street) make him the natural heir of Raymond Chandler will have that conviction confirmed here. Walker's latest tale is so rich in Chandler-esque dialogue and description that it would likely elicit a boozy chuckle of recognition from the master himself: "Stuart Lund came in at six-two and three hundred pounds in gray silk tailoring with a large head of wavy yellow hair, blue eyes like wax drippings, and a black chevron-shaped moustach he hadn't bothered to bleach." Lund is a lawyer who summons Walker to a secret meeting at a Detroit airport hotel with Jay Bell Furlong, a world-famous architect who is supposedly dying in Los Angeles. Before he passes on, Furlong wants Walker to find the person who ended the architect's romance with a much younger woman eight years ago by sending him a photo of her in bed with another man. Furlong has just discovered that the photo was a fake. The possible suspects include various Furlong family members and several rivals. Struggling through an overheated Detroit described as vividly and lovingly as Chandler's L.A., Walker survives a bullet to his head and sneaks out of the hospital against doctors' orders to get on with the case, just as Philip Marlowe would have. There may be a few too many descriptions of staircases, buildings and old cars, but Estleman more than makes up for these digressions by drawing new life from one of the genre's classic resources.

Publishers Weekly

Amos Walker, Detroit PI, revisits the past in the 13th entry in an estimable hard-boiled series (The Witchfinder, etc.). In the echoing, nearly empty galleries of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Walker agrees to accompany a curator on a private mission to recover a recently stolen medieval illuminated manuscript, the Hours of the title. But in the rundown skin-flick theater where the transaction is to take place, Walker is distracted by a young woman and then shot at. The curator, his package, the woman and shooter disappear. The woman turns out to be the young wife ("she was pushing twenty but not hard enough to dent it") of the theater owner, a notorious and wealthy porn king--and rare book collector--confined to a wheelchair. Also involved in the shooting is Earl North, the man who killed Walker's beloved first boss, Dale Leopold, 20 years before, a crime for which North went free. Vivid memories of Leopold combine with the debilitating effects of the flu and midwinter in Motor City to keep Walker on a bitter edge until, the flu broken and a connection between crimes old and new made, readers are led to the fitting conclusion. Like all Estleman offerings, this one comes with extraordinarily observant narration, intelligent dialogue, memorable characters--and style to spare. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal