Amos Walker has a sharp eye and a sharper sense of the absurd. Pair these with a dry wit and a fondness for Scotch and you've got Detroit's answer to Philip Marlowe. Just trade the fedora for a Tigers' baseball cap. Loren Estleman's acerbically philosophical PI has been going strong for 13 novels and shows no sign of slowing down. In a funky, meta-textual noir riff, A Smile on the Face of the Tiger immerses Walker in the world of '40s and '50s American pulp fiction, where men clench lantern jaws and women (sorry, dames) wear silk stockings and cause trouble.

When a New York publisher asks Walker to track down author Eugene Booth, who's refusing to allow his classic Paradise Valley to be reissued, Walker's first instinct is to say no. But Booth's novel, about a Detroit race riot in 1943, fascinates Walker, especially after he finds Booth's dictation tapes. Booth has "a low fuzzy bass that might once have been rich and pleasant before too much whiskey, too many cigarettes, and three or more trips too many around a rundown block had hammered it into that dull monotone you hear at last call and over the loudspeaker in the eleventh inning of a pitchers' duel." Walker discovers that it's not just whiskey and cigarettes that have affected the author. His wife was murdered 50 years ago to prevent Booth from spilling the truth about the events he fictionalized.

Walker traces Booth to a rundown motel on the shores of Lake Huron. His presence there is no surprise, given his fondness for solitude and fish. But why is mobster Glad Eddie Cypress, who should be gearing up for a big book tour, holed up at the same motel? When Walker finds Booth swinging from the rafters, he decides to find out. When the number of people who wanted Booth dead starts multiplying, and a 50-year-old race riot and murder move back into the spotlight, Walker is hard-pressed to keep himself from becoming history.

Estleman's sardonic prose (the Detroit River is "the only spot on the North American continent where you could look across at a foreign country without seeing either wilderness or tattoo parlors") makes A Smile on the Face of the Tiger move energetically along. This noir veteran, never content to rest on his laurels, has produced another gritty winner. --Kelly Flynn


From Publishers Weekly
HThe three Shamus Awards Estleman has won for his Amos Walker mysteries (The Hours of the Virgin, etc.) testify to his reputation as the torchbearer of the classic PI yarn. In his 14th novel about the tough-minded Detroit gumshoe, Estleman pays explicit tribute to his artistic ancestors, dedicating the book to "Hamilton, Prather, McCoy, and Spillane" and others, and centering its complicated, absorbing plot around the fates of a classic paperback writer and the bombshell blonde who posed for his books' lurid covers. Walker is hired by sleek Louise Starr, owner of a nascent New York publishing house, to find Eugene Booth, author of such titles as Tough Town and Bullets Are My Business. Booth has called it quits on a contract to reprint his best-known novel, Paradise Valley, set within the horrific Detroit race riot of June 1943; Starr wants to know why. Walker locates Booth, a broken old drunk tapping at a manual typewriter, at a fishing lodge north of Motor City. They drink and they talkDabout the murder of Booth's wife way back when and about what really went down at the riot; hours later, Walker finds Booth hanged in his cabin. Suicide? Then how to explain the "heeled" guy in an adjacent cabin, who Walker soon learns is hit man-turned-bestselling author Glad Eddie Cypress? Fleta Skirrett, former paperback jacket honey, now waiting to die in an old folks' home, offers some clues, and so does the son of the painter of Booth's covers, who lives surrounded by plastic-wrapped paperbacks. A good, involving mystery featuring strong characters and prose as smooth as the brim of a fedora, this novel makes smart points about writing, publishing and the cult of mysteries. Anyone who appreciates the difference between a gat and a gun, a gam and a leg, is going to wolf it down. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Amos Walker's 14th adventure is a corker. A New York book editor recruits him to locate Eugene Booth, who used to write noir novels back in the 1950s. Booth disappeared, and the world thought he was dead until he resurfaces long enough to file a lawsuit against a publisher who reprinted one of his books without permission. With the publicity of this event, another publisher (a legit one, this time) wants to reprint some of Booth's other titles, but he has vanished again. Walker traces him to a fishing resort in northern Michigan only to have him turn up dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Estleman is a fine writer who can skewer the classic noir form while paying homage to it. Walker's wry wit gets better with every book, and John Kenneth's wonderful, gritty voice is perfect. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Barbara Perkins, Irving P.L., TX Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Amos Walker, hard-boiled Detroit private eye, is back. This time he's on the trail of Eugene Booth, a pulp writer of the '50s. Walker finds him, but when Booth winds up dead, Walker must find the connection between his apparent suicide and the murder of Booth's wife 40 years before. John Kenneth's voice is strikingly similar to the voice of Stacy Keech, which makes it well suited for the edgy and cynical Walker. But Kenneth shines in the role of Eugene Booth, capturing the gravelly voice of the whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking paperback writer. P.B.J. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Eugene Booth wrote noir novels in the fifties but then disappeared, apparently a victim of the bottle. He resurfaces, lawsuit in hand, when a publisher reprints one of his books without permission. With his name back in the headlines, and a new contract pending from a legit publisher, Booth disappears again. Detroit PI Amos Walker is hired by the publisher, Louise Starr (an old flame of Walker's), to find the elusive writer. Walker, more than a little intrigued by the case--living the noir life himself--tracks Booth down to a fishing resort in northern Michigan. There he strikes up a friendship with the hard-drinking, bitter man and learns that the writer is working on a nonfiction account of a Detroit race riot in the forties. When Booth unexpectedly dies in an obviously staged suicide, Walker realizes that the half-century-old race riot may still hold secrets that powerful people in Detroit do not want revealed. Walker is himself a modernized version of the pulp-era PI, and award-winner Estleman has written a very entertaining thriller that offers a fitting tribute both to the genre and to the tough, passionate men who created it. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From Kirkus Reviews
Detroit shamus Amos Walker, who fills Marlowe's shoes and adds a few hardboiled scuffmarks of his own, is asked by sultry publisher Louise Starr to track down Eugene Booth, a '50s pulp writer she'd love to reprint--if only he hadn't returned her book advance and disappeared. Immersing himself in pulpy old prose, prurient dust-jacket art, and the gossip of collectibles dealers, Walker chats up Fleta Skirrett (who's slid from posing for old book covers into near-dementia at the Edencrest Retirement Home); meets the reclusive son of cover artist Lowell Birdsall; crosses paths with Mafia hitman-turned-bestselling confessional author Glad Eddie Cypress; and finally corrals Booth himself and a case of liquor in a fisherman's motel up north. Next morning, Booth is swinging by his belt from the cabin rafters, and Walker has stepped into a noir nightmare that began 50 years back with the murder of Booth's wife Allison and a police report Booth's brother Duane never filed. Before murders old and new are solved, Walker will get a helluva black eye, some commitment-free loving, and a chance to mouth à la vintage Spillane.Like Walker's earlier adventures (Never Street, 1997, etc.), a Waspish valentine to the old Black Mask writers, with cutthroat dialogue, lovingly delivered concussions, and enough punch and plot twists to accompany another full case of booze. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
The Haunting Past
Loren Estleman's protagonist Amos Walker has long been a cornerstone of modern-day private eye literature. Estleman's latest effort, A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (the 14th in the series), is filled with all the wry charm and expert insight we've come to expect from Estleman's controlled fusion of wit and wisdom. The author always gives his novels an extra dose of genuinely moving humanity, featuring honest character motivation and a gripping, energetic first-person narrative.

This time out, P.I. Amos Walker is hired by a New York publisher to hunt down the vanished pulp author Eugene Booth, a onetime acclaimed writer of noir crime novels who stopped writing four decades earlier. Booth was never able to recapture the respect and celebrity he had with his most famous novel, Paradise Valley, the fictionalized account of an actual 1943 race riot in Detroit. Though the publisher was set to reprint Paradise Valley, Booth inexplicably returned his advance, broke the contract, and abandoned his home. Now it's up to Walker to find out exactly why.

Eventually Walker tracks Booth to a desolate cabin near the Canadian border; in the older man Walker discovers a like-minded individual who has a real need to dig to the heart of the truth no matter what the price. Booth doesn't want Paradise Valley reprinted because he's rewriting his masterwork and making an effort to tell the real story behind the race riot, including the brutal fact that the police allowed several lynchings to occur for fear of their own safety. Though Booth tried to investigate the case nearly 50 years ago, it cost him greatly when his wife was murdered. Now, when it appears that Booth is being spied on, Walker goes into action to try to reveal events covered up over a half century ago but which still have deadly ramifications even today.

With his tight and pointed prose, Loren D. Estleman is highly capable of providing the reader with an engaging novel concerning racism, police conspiracy, and the haunting past that one can never let go of. Estleman's writing is so sharp and detailed that there is always a supple but convincing underpinning of deeper issues roiling beneath the moment. A Smile on the Face of the Tiger offers us a poetic voice of subtle yet resonating themes relating to loss, audacity, and the hope for redemption.

The author has a real respect and deference for the hard-boiled and noir authors who came long before him. The subject of a mostly forgotten pulp writer is handled with great admiration and affection. Beneath the guise of Booth are his real-life counterparts Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Horace McCoy, and dozens of other suspense authors lost in the recesses of time. That sense of fondness is what makes A Smile on the Face of the Tiger a standout in the Walker canon -- evocative, elaborate, and yet always endearing. The complexity of character detail, the cohesive story structure, and the poignant writing prove once again just what a superior stylist and master craftsman Estleman remains.

The natural fluidity of protagonist and plot is what holds the center of this tightly woven novel together. Walker is an Everyman, a private eye who not merely does his job but is his job. There are no superman elements here, but rather an honesty and humor that prevails through the investigation at hand. The mystery itself is well wrought and engaging, with Walker slowly moving over the same terrain as he rereads novels and studies crime reports and newspaper articles to discover what lies at the core of a long-forgotten writer's life. Walker's persona remains wonderfully balanced between the drive for justice and the humble need for acerbic, self-effacing humor. The author never fails to earn our confidence that the next Amos Walker novel will be of the same distinguished high quality as all the rest.

--Tom Piccirilli

Tom Piccirilli is the author of eight novels, including Hexes and Shards, and his Felicity Grove mystery series, consisting of The Dead Past and Sorrow's Crown. He has sold more than 100 stories to the anthologies Future Crimes, Bad News, The Conspiracy Files, and Best of the American West II. An omnibus collection of 40 stories titled Deep into That Darkness Peering has just been released by Terminal Fright Press. Tom divides his time between New York City and Estes Park, Colorado.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Amos Walker, old-school private eye, is hunting for a man who used to write steamy crime fiction - and now may have gotten burned by his own words." "The paperback novel Walker carried in his pocket was fifty years old and from its tawdry cover to its fiery prose - still red hot. A fictionalized tale of a real-life Detroit race riot in 1943, Paradise Valley was written by a man named Eugene Booth. With a New York publisher dying to reprint Booth's pulp fiction classic, Booth's disappearance didn't make any sense. At least not yet." "While hunting down Booth, Walker finds this peaceful missing-person case developing into something much more deadly. For a notorious New York mob hit man, one in protective custody and promoting his own bestselling, tell-all book, is also trailing Booth, and a half-century-old murder is coming back to light. Between that killing and the story told in Booth's Paradise Valley, Walker is sure Booth has good reasons to want to disappear, and some people have good reasons to see him dead. For Walker, it's a question of separating fiction from fact, and keeping the key players alive long enough to know the truth. And that includes himself.

SYNOPSIS

The blonde wore a red slip and held a broken bottle in her hand. The man wore a trench coat and a fedora, and through the window flames were burning in the night...The paperback novel Walker carried in his pocket was fifty years old and -- from its tawdry cover to its fiery prose -- still red hot. A fictionalized tale of a real-life Detroit race riot in 1943, Paradise Valley was written by a man named Eugene Booth. With a New York publisher dying to reprint Booth's pulp-fiction classic, Booth's disappearance didn't make any sense. At least not yet.

While hunting down Booth, Walker finds this peaceful missing-person case developing into something much more deadly. For a notorious New York mob hit man, one in protective custody and promoting his own bestselling, tell-all book, is also trailing Booth, and a half-century-old murder is coming back to light. Between that killing and the story told in Booth's Paradise Valley, Walker is sure Booth has good reason's to want to disappear, and some people have good reasons to see him dead. For Walker, it's a question of separating fiction from fact, and keeping the key players alive long enough to know the truth. And that includes himself.

In Smile on the Face of the Tiger, Loren D. Estleman spins a vivid, gritty noir mystery. At the same time he pays homage to -- and has some serious fun with -- the classic American art form of pulp fiction, where passion, lies, truth, and murder are a way of life, and Amos Walker would be right at home...

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

HThe three Shamus Awards Estleman has won for his Amos Walker mysteries (The Hours of the Virgin, etc.) testify to his reputation as the torchbearer of the classic PI yarn. In his 14th novel about the tough-minded Detroit gumshoe, Estleman pays explicit tribute to his artistic ancestors, dedicating the book to "Hamilton, Prather, McCoy, and Spillane" and others, and centering its complicated, absorbing plot around the fates of a classic paperback writer and the bombshell blonde who posed for his books' lurid covers. Walker is hired by sleek Louise Starr, owner of a nascent New York publishing house, to find Eugene Booth, author of such titles as Tough Town and Bullets Are My Business. Booth has called it quits on a contract to reprint his best-known novel, Paradise Valley, set within the horrific Detroit race riot of June 1943; Starr wants to know why. Walker locates Booth, a broken old drunk tapping at a manual typewriter, at a fishing lodge north of Motor City. They drink and they talk--about the murder of Booth's wife way back when and about what really went down at the riot; hours later, Walker finds Booth hanged in his cabin. Suicide? Then how to explain the "heeled" guy in an adjacent cabin, who Walker soon learns is hit man-turned-bestselling author Glad Eddie Cypress? Fleta Skirrett, former paperback jacket honey, now waiting to die in an old folks' home, offers some clues, and so does the son of the painter of Booth's covers, who lives surrounded by plastic-wrapped paperbacks. A good, involving mystery featuring strong characters and prose as smooth as the brim of a fedora, this novel makes smart points about writing, publishing and the cult of mysteries. Anyone who appreciates the difference between a gat and a gun, a gam and a leg, is going to wolf it down. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Amos Walker's 14th adventure is a corker. A New York book editor recruits him to locate Eugene Booth, who used to write noir novels back in the 1950s. Booth disappeared, and the world thought he was dead until he resurfaces long enough to file a lawsuit against a publisher who reprinted one of his books without permission. With the publicity of this event, another publisher (a legit one, this time) wants to reprint some of Booth's other titles, but he has vanished again. Walker traces him to a fishing resort in northern Michigan only to have him turn up dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Estleman is a fine writer who can skewer the classic noir form while paying homage to it. Walker's wry wit gets better with every book, and John Kenneth's wonderful, gritty voice is perfect. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Barbara Perkins, Irving P.L., TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Amos Walker, hard-boiled Detroit private eye, is back. This time he's on the trail of Eugene Booth, a pulp writer of the '50s. Walker finds him, but when Booth winds up dead, Walker must find the connection between his apparent suicide and the murder of Booth's wife 40 years before. John Kenneth's voice is strikingly similar to the voice of Stacy Keech, which makes it well suited for the edgy and cynical Walker. But Kenneth shines in the role of Eugene Booth, capturing the gravelly voice of the whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking paperback writer. P.B.J. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Internet Book Watch

Amos Walker is a hard-boiled private eye of the old school. in A Smile On The Face Of The Tiger, Walker is tracking down a man named Eugene Booth as part of a missing-person case. But something is going on he wasn't expecting that involves a New York mob hit man and a half-century-old murder. Just as with his previous Amos Walker mysteries, Loren Estleman writes a vividly crafted, gritty, pulp fiction style novel set in an underworld of passion, lies, murder, and unexpected revelations. A "must" for all classic, two-fisted private eye mystery fans

Randy Michael Signor