A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (Amos Walker)

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

Product Description
"I never thought I'd see her again. But never is longer than forever."

She is book editor, Louise Starr, a beautiful and scheming ghost from Amos Walker's past; and she wants the Detroit private eye to find Eugene Booth, a missing paperback writer from the 1950s and ask him why he turned down his first book contract in 40 years.

Eugene Booth's trail leads to a rustic motel cabin, where the crusty old pro is hammering out his first novel in decades on a battered Smith Corona with a case of bourbon for inspiration. But when the writer winds up hanging from his own belt, Walker must discover the connection between the apparent suicide, the murder of Booth's wife 40 years before - and a deadly secret as old as World War II.