Motor City Blue

I have been peripherally aware of a series of private-eye novels set in Detroit, but it's taken me this long to get around to reading one of them. I started with the first in the series, Motor City Blue, by Loren D. Estleman, published in 1980, concerning Amos Walker, and it was a good read. It was also a blatant rip-off (or maybe homage is the right word) of the hard-boiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I think homage is more accurate, because the stylistic similarities are done with affection.

Walker is the kind of fellow who likes to watch old movies on TV, archaically wears a fedora, and keeps a bottle of Scotch in his desk. He seems to have swallowed the entire print run of Black Mask magazine, using terms like "widowmaker" to describe a gun, and at the climax of the book holds a gun on the culprit (a femme fatale, natch) and explains the entire plot. As any good dissolute P.I. would, he has a romantic interest in a hooker with a heart of gold, and gets beat up a few times. He also has a dicey relationship with the local police.

The plot even borrows from Chandler. Walker is hired to find the missing ward of a gangster, and the only evidence he has to go on is a picture of her in a pornographic still (shades of The Big Sleep). He also witnesses the kidnapping of an old army associate, and of course these two cases end up being related.

Where Estleman excels is in his vivid descriptions of Detroit. Of course it's winter, and I can practically see the slate-gray sky, smell the blackened slow and feel the sleet. His depiction of race relations is also uncompromising. The novel is set in 1979, and the city was still a powder keg back then. Walker is not a bigot, but he isn't Mahatma Gandhi, either (he admits that he gets nervous when he sees a group of black men). Another key setting is an old-fashioned porno shop, pre-video days, when stag films were in canisters. This type of thing would be obsolete in just a few years.

Though Estleman cribs his style, I found the book enjoyable and the character of Walker engaging, and I'll look to continue reading more in the series.