With apologies to Dashiell Hammett fans (after all, I am one myself), I think the archetypal hard-boiled private eye will always be Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Every hard-boiled shamus to this day—and likely far into the future—has to touch his cap, one way or another, to that tall Californian in the trench coat. Even if “he” is a she, even if the writer updates the concept by giving him computer skilz, endowing him with a regular girlfriend, or moving his office to an airplane cockpit. Even if he doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink, has adopted Buddhism, and treats his body like a temple.
Loren D. Estleman bucks that trend. He flatters, sincerely, by imitation. His Detroit P.I., Amos Walker, could be Marlowe’s love child, or maybe Marlowe was cryogenically frozen. Amos Walker wears a hat (or did in the early books of the series, though he admits here that he doesn’t own a trench coat). He smokes and refuses to worry about it, and drinks with enthusiasm. His office, in a seedy building downtown, is exactly like Marlowe’s as far as I can tell, except for the view.
The result makes for a very comfortable read for the hard-boiled fan. Why mess with a formula that works?
At the beginning of Retro, Walker is contacted by an old character from an earlier story, a notorious and legendary Detroit madame. She’s dying now and knows it, and she wants Walker to track down her next of kin, an adopted son named Delwayne. Delwayne fled to Canada back in 1968, in the wake of an accidental bomb blast that killed two fellow antiwar activists.
One phone call to a detective agency in Windsor gets him his man. Delwayne is now living under the name of Lance West, making a marginal living as a graphic novel artist. After an unpleasant first meeting, “Lance” changes his tone and asks Walker to investigate the death of his father. He is convinced he’s the natural son of a briefly famous fighter, Curtis Smallwood, who was murdered in 1949. Walker tells him to get in touch when he has money to spend.
The very next day, Walker gets a call from Delwayne/Lance. He’s in a local airport hotel, he says, and wants to meet with him. But when Walker gets there, he finds the man shot to death.
There are some people for whom 1968 isn’t that long ago.
For some people, even 1949 isn’t that long ago.
Walker doesn’t have a client, but he has a code. Marlowe would have understood.
Along the way, Walker even finds time to rescue a lady in distress.
Estleman isn’t Chandler’s equal when it comes to first person narration, but he isn’t bad.
On a nice day in June it was a brisk walk from Meldrum and Zinzser to Walker and Nobody on West Grand. On an airless day like we were having, under a smut-colored sky screwed down to the rooftops, it was like crawling uphill through a dirty air duct.
After someone breaks into his office, Walker has this reaction:
The waiting room and the office seemed undisturbed. The file cases were locked and they hadn’t taken a knife to the upholstery. They’d probably thought there was nothing worth taking. That made me mad, because they were right.
If you like your hard-boiled mysteries poured straight-up, Loren D. Estleman runs a square house. Retro is recommended, with the usual cautions for language and adult situations.