| Silent Thunder (The Amos Walker Series #10) |  | Author: Loren D. Estleman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $7.75
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 4499449
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 0395410746
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780395410745
ASIN: 0395410746
Publication Date: March 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The tabloids were full of it. Constance Thayer, after a night of clubbing, drinks, and drugs, had taken an automatic pistol from the collection of her industrialist husband Doyle Thayer Jr. and emptied it into his back, as he lay naked and unconscious in their Iroquois Heights home. The news of Constance Thayer's X-rated past breathed new life into the scandal for another month. Walker's job was to gather enough dirt on the late Mr. Thayer to make his widow look clean by comparison. What he found was a monstrous magnate, a dubious corpse, and a gang of country-style gunrunners.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The quality of writing one expects from Mr. Estleman, almost a classic September 9, 2008
An Amos Walker Mystery. After reading a rare Estleman clunker (Stress (Detroit Crime Series #5) - skip it), this is a welcome return to the quality of writing one expects from Mr. Estleman, almost a classic.
Tight plot, no wasted words or actions in 200 pages of paperback that would be 400 pages in any other private eye mystery writer's hands, or a 1,000 page 20-hour miniseries for James Michener if he were a private eye mystery writer.
Includes an excellent short story "The Anniversary Waltz" at the end.
 Polished private eye yarn September 26, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Amos Walker is solidly in the tradition of the American private eye as established by such masters as Chandler,Hammett and MacDonald.He is white,middle aged,and partial to the twin vices of nicotine and alcohol.As a one man operation in an insecure profession he is no stranger to an existence just a step or two away from the poverty line.He is quick with a one liner and has an outlook on life that tempers a bruised romanticism with a relaxed tolerance and understanding.A good friend and bar room companion methinks.
His beat is Detroit,a city Estleman makes very much a character in its own right-decaying,violence ridden,corrupt and a place -as the writer is quick to point out-that has its history and culture very much tied to the gun.
In this book Walker is hired to prove the innocence of a wealthy widow,Constance Thayer,who is pleading self defence on a charge of shooting her late husband ,an abusive drunk.The late unlamented's father is seeking to prove cold blooded murder as he wishes to gain custody of her child and train him to take over the family business.
Walker becomes entangled in the arms trade as he seeks to find evidence that will exonerate Constance,and it is this which forms the real meat and potatoes of the book.Clearing Constance is relatively easy but the arms dealers are another and more vicious proposition entirely especially when very large sums of money are at stake,as is the case here.This aspect of the book does tend to strike a false note or two for me ,with a bad guy,a vietnam veteran, who seems to have strayed in from a Bond movie,what with his dreams of blackmailing an African government over mineral rights.It just sits oddly with the rest of the book which is a solid well crafted traditional private eye yarn.
Still,all in all ,its neatly and economically told,with compassion and heart not to mention a mordauntly cynical view of law enforcement.Just a pity about the plot going a tad awry towards the end
Still worth reading if you like the private eye genre.
Amos Sticks to His Guns June 24, 2001
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Loren Estleman's Amos Walker private eye series is one of the best of the genre. Novels like "Sugartown" and "The Glass Highway" are among the best P.I. novels ever. With "Silent Thunder," Walker stays true to form. He's as quick with his guns and hit wit as ever. He continues to run into dangeorus thugs and corrupt policemen. And he remains as uncorruptable as ever. In this installment, Walker takes on some crazy gun dealers and a powerful businessman on behalf of a client who's about to go on trial for murdering her husband. Its the type of case that Walker specializes in, helping the little person in a battle against the larger forces trying to extinguish them. Unfortunately in this book, Estleman allows plausibility to get taken for a ride. He stretches both the corrupt cop and the crazy gun nut angles way too far. Not to mention the fact that this is the first Walker novel in which the hero begins to seem a bit stale. Estleman has not allowed Walker to grow as a character the way Lawrence Block has with Matthew Scudder or Andrew Vachss has with his Burke charcter. And by this, the ninth novel in the series, Walker is beginning to get a little tired. Perhaps that is why Estleman took a seven year break from writing Walker adventures after the novel that follows this one. Overall, Walker novels are never bad but they are usually better than this.
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