He rattled his ice. “The death of friends, or death of every brilliant eye that made a catch in the breath.”
“Yours?”
“Yeats. I came across it in a book the other day while I was looking for something else, you know the way you do. Can’t get rid of it.”
“What’s it mean?”
“The lights are blinking out, buddy. Every night there are a few less than there were the night before.” He set down the glass sharply. “Let’s go out in the sun.”
I tend to think of Loren D. Estleman as one of the new kids in the detective novel biz, because that’s what he was when I first started reading him. But in fact he’s an old veteran now, a solid purveyor who unashamedly works Raymond Chandler’s old corner, instead of trying to put out big, thick thrillers about government conspiracies like so many others in the genre. He gives honest value for the reader’s money, and I relish his books. Among those, Every Brilliant Eye is (in my opinion) one of the strongest. It’s not a new book – it goes back to the 1980s, yet it felt fresh to me.
Amos Walker of Detroit, Estleman’s series detective, gets a call to go and collect his old friend and army buddy Barry Stackpole, who’s fallen off the wagon, out of a “blind pig” bar in a bad part of town. Barry is Detroit’s top crime reporter. The bar gets raided before Amos can extricate Barry, but he manages to sneak them both out (by punching a cop). The next time Amos sees Barry, he’s dried out again, but then Barry disappears completely. The newspaper’s lawyer hires Amos to look for him, because he has a date to testify before a grand jury.
Searching for his friend, poking into his affairs, Amos finds evidence that Barry had been writing a book about their time in Vietnam, and he comes to believe that Barry is dead, and that he’s dead because he was uncovering an old crime from the war. There’s police and civic corruption (business as usual in Detroit) involved, and Amos finds himself set up for a fatal accident, among other threats.
There’s real pleasure to be had in plain, old-school mystery writing, and I enjoyed Every Brilliant Eye immensely. Recommended. Cautions for language, violence and adult themes (including the hero committing adultery).