Bela Lugosi’s Frankenstein screen test puts Valentino in the picture for murderBela Lugosi's Frankenstein screen test puts Valentino in the picture for murderEveryone knows the Frankenstein monster was played by Boris Karloff. His portrayal is so famous that the play Arsenic and Old Lace was filled with Karloff/monster jokes-even when the part of the monstrously deformed villain was played by another actor. But before Karloff's memorable portrayal, another famous 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of the monster.The screen test footage was lost for decades, until Valentino, that never-say-die film archivist, gets a hot tip about the whereabouts of the incriminating (for really bad, heavily accented acting) footage. But it comes with a price far greater than the money he'll have to pay. Someone would kill to get that reel of film, and that makes Valentino a mortal obstacle who would rather not die for art. People have already been murdered for the film, and Val doesn't want to push his luck…but boy, that reel is too good to let go…. Enter a crew of steampunk fans. Loving the arcane strangeness that is Valentino's life-not to mention the completely glam prospect of seeing the original filmic Count Dracula as the Frankenstein monster-they will find a way to save Valentino and Lugosi's infamous screen test. Or if they can't do that, have a great party anyway. Val just hopes it's not a wake.…In Alive!, Loren D. Estleman delivers a mystery that only he can.LOREN D. ESTLEMAN has written two previous Valentino, film detective murder mysteries, and almost seventy books all told. Winner of four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards, he lives in Central Michigan."Shamus-winner Estleman's captivating second mystery to feature L.A. film detective Valentino. Readers will eagerly turn the pages."-Publishers Weekly, starred review on Alone"Frames melds Estleman's love of movies with his gift for swift, satisfying storytelling."-San Francisco Chronicle"Great cast, great subject, flawless delivery from a real pro."-Booklist starred review on Frames"Frames is gripping entertainment. If you love movies, you'll love this mystery."-Lawrence Kasdan, Oscar Award-nominee "Estleman has scripted yet another wacky comedic mystery. His snappy dialog, feisty characters, Hollywood lore, and gentle romance make this his funniest to date."-Library Journal on Frames"Estleman has laid claim to a fresh new franchise and the turf is all his. My hat's off to him."-Sue Grafton, New York Times #1 bestselling author on Frames

AudioFile - Jeanette LarsonIt's Prohibition-era Detroit and the gangsters are running rum, knocking over gambling joints, and killing each other in their attempts to gain a larger chunk of territory. Their criminal exploits are chronicled by a jaded tabloid reporter Connie Minor who has seen it all: the murders, the graft, the political corruption. Occasionally Minor even finds himself to be an unwilling participant in the action. Estleman's writing perfectly captures the roughness of the times and characters, and his story is superbly brought to life by narrator Frank Muller. Using changes in tone, accent and pace, Muller capably and appropriately distinguishes the characters. A good story simply told and an outstanding production that provides high entertainment for listeners who like the genre. J.L. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

A hot new Amos Walker mystery by Loren D. Estleman, the master of the hard-boiled detective novel.Amos Walker is hired by Helen and Dante Gunner, a bohemian Ann Arbor couple, to find Jerry Marcus, a film director who has disappeared with their investment money. It's one of Walker's easiest jobs to date. In just a few short hours, Walker locates Marcus in his bedroom...murdered, his body shoved into a cupboard, a bullet through his head.This case is opened and shut quickly, but Walker can't quite let it go. When Dante is arrested for the murder Walker finds himself again in Helen's employ, this time trying to prove that Dante didn't do it. When Walker interviews Holly Zacharias, a college student who was the last person to see Marcus alive, things get interesting. Because if Marcus is dead, and Dante is his killer, then who is driving by in the Crown Vic, shooting at Walker and Holly? Jerry Marcus just might still be alive, and his plans may be worse...

The place: Detroit. The time: World War II. While most of the police department is fighting overseas, the four men of the Racket Squad struggle to keep a lid on a powderkeg stuffed with draft-dodging troublemakers, Black Market gangsters, enemy saboteurs, and a mixed bag of racial and ethnic groups working uneasily side by side in defense plants run by the automobile industry. With blackjacks, brass knuckles, tommy guns, and their bare fists, Lieutenant Max Zagreb, Sergeant Starvo Canal, and detectives McReary and Burke—known collectively as the "Four Horsemen"—battle their way through ten gritty stories in the hardest-boiled town during the twentieth century's hardest-boiled decade.

A Tough Town In A Tough Time -- Detroit during World War II was where the United States' furious effort to out-manufacture the Germans and Japanese occurred. Industry imported workers to replace men gone to war -- Southern whites and blacks working side by side fo the first time. Detroit had it all: rationing, the black-market, the Mafia, fortunes to be made, a new kind of jazz for seething summer nights -- it was a powder keg.Through this tense, troubled world cuts a killer, a self-appointed soldier savaging ordinary people, the elderly and the defenseless. Lieutenant Zagreb's most important job is to keep the city from exploding, then to catch a mad killer with a cop roster of 4Fs and near-retirees. And finally, he must save his own soul. He cannot succeed at all three.Wartime Detroit is dazzingly recreated in Loren Estleman's latest tour de force crime novel. Great auto manufacturers labor mightily; blacks struggle for an economic toehold; whites strive for decent lives in the chaos. The climax, during America's nastiest race riots, is unforgettable.Amazon.com ReviewOne of the most interesting new trends in crime fiction is the regional historical thriller, and nobody does it better than Loren D. Estleman, whose books about Detroit's past--Aces and Eights, Billy Gashade, City of Widows, Edsel, Red Highway, Stamping Ground, Stress--turn that city's muscular and often bloody heritage into absorbing fiction.In Jitterbug, Estelman shows us Detroit during World War II, where Lieutenant Maximillian "Zag" Zagreb heads up a team of overage misfits at the police department's racket squad. A particularly nasty killer called Kilroy appears to be targeting and then slicing up hoarders of ration coupons, and Lieutenant Zagreb's investigators are the thin red line deployed to stop him. They use some extremely unorthodox tactics and find themselves in the midst of a race riot, but Kilroy continues to elude them and fight his private war against profiteers. The heavy is a masterful creation, a believable psychopath who wears a stolen Army Air Force uniform and has made up a heroic career to cover his rejection by military psychiatrists. "On those rare occasions when he did not stand outside himself," Estelman writes, "he could hear the thump of the mortars and chomping of the heavy machine guns behind their sandbags on the hills." --Dick AdlerFrom Publishers WeeklyWriting with wit and carefully crafting a chilling suspense plot, Estleman (Journey of the Dead) delivers another spine-tingling crime novel set in Detroit. This time, however, unlike in his Amos Walker novels (Never Street, 1997, etc.), the action tales place during WWII. The heat is on Racket Squad leader Lieutenant Maximilian Zagreb and his three detectives (known collectively as The Four Horsemen for their unorthodox, brutal, mostly illegal methods) when someone starts killing people for hoarding ration coupons. Using some artful manipulation and some very unsubtle pressure, Zagreb leans on a couple of unlikely sources for help. Frankie "The Conductor" Orr, a local mob boss, and Dwight Littlejohn, a black riveter in an airplane factory, are unwilling participants in Zagreb's efforts to smoke out the killer dubbed Kilroy by the newspapers. As the cops twist arms and Kilroy's victims pile up, Detroit explodes in a bloody race riot that summer of 1943, making Zagreb think that Anzio might be safer. Terrific, tough characters, snappy dialogue, crackling action and some imaginative applications of the third degree, make this a triumph for Estleman. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Ballad of Black Bart: a riveting western novel from Spur Award-Winning Author Loren D. Estleman."Loren Estleman is my hero."—Harlan CobenBetween July 1875 and November 1883, a single outlaw robbed the stagecoaches of Wells Fargo in California's Mother Lode country a record of twenty-eight times. Armed with an unloaded shotgun, walking to and from the scenes of the robberies, often for hundreds of miles, and leaving poems behind, the infamous Black Bart was fiercely hunted. Between robberies, Black Bart was known as Charles E. Bolton, a distinguished, middle-aged man who enjoyed San Francisco's entertainments in the company of socialites drawn to his quiet, temperate good nature and upper-class tastes.Meanwhile, James B. Hume, Wells Fargo's legendary chief of detectives, made Bart's apprehension a matter of personal as well as professional interest. The Ballad of Black Bart is a duel of wits involving two adversaries of...

Johnny Vermillion's theater troupe brings masterpieces to the Wild West. The four actors are versatile enough to wear many costumes and play many roles. A few props, a little makeup, a costume and—voilà—applause on the rugged frontier.Johnny also arranges a special attraction for each town. While his actors bustle in and out of costumes, on and off the stage in many roles, one plays the villain in the bank. Then the actors take their curtain calls and railroad away.Who? Us? Rob a bank? But you saw all of us on stage. When could we have done that?A Pinkerton man becomes the troupe's severest critic: He notices the news reports of stage performances one day and bank robberies the next. He follows the troupe, packing his suspicions. Finally, he sets a clever trap.Johnny Vermillion is one of the most entertaining rogues ever to turn a dishonest dollar. Any audience will love a troupe that can transform A Midsummer Night's Dream...

During the Great Depression, a ruthless killer breaks out of prison to reclaim his status as Public Enemy Number One in this chilling, action-packed novel Before Dillinger, before Bonnie and Clyde, there was Virgil Ballard, the most ruthless killer the United States has ever seen. Ballard gets his start in the early 1920s, hijacking liquor trucks and selling the bootlegged hooch. He has a youthful face and the eyes of a killer, and it isn't long before he baptizes himself in another man's blood. The state gives him a life sentence, but no jail can hold Ballard. When he busts out of prison, he knows he has a date with death—but how many coppers can he take out along the way? Inspired by the author's love of 1930s gangster movies, Loren D. Estleman's debut thriller surges with the narrative energy and crackling dialogue that would become hallmarks of his numerous acclaimed and award-winning hard-boiled crime novels.

A hot new Amos Walker mystery by a master of the hard-boiled detective novel. "Loren Estleman is my hero."—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling authorDetroit entrepreneur Carl Fannon hires Walker to trace Emil Haas, his partner, whose sudden disappearance has jeopardized their firm's plans to purchase the historic Sentinel Building. Almost immediately, the missing man shows up and asks the detective to meet him in the empty Sentinel to discuss a top-secret concern. Walker complies, only to find not Haas, but Fannon's suffocated corpse locked in a basement vault. When Gwendolyn Haas, the partner's adult daughter, enters the picture, the client number rises to three, including one missing and one murdered. But the worst is yet to come: Emil Haas's "concern" is that Fannon's been buying up depressed real estate on behalf of Charlotte Sing, the international fugitive Walker knows only too well as Madam Sing. Madam Sing is believed to have been...

A missing boy forces Detroit PI Amos Walker to investigate a long-cold caseIt is hardly unusual for an elderly woman to ask Amos Walker to search for her grandchild. As a private detective in one of the country’s roughest cities, tracking missing persons is the way he makes most of his money. But Martha Evancek’s grandson Michael has been missing for nearly twenty years, having disappeared in the aftermath of a murder. When Michael’s father was laid off from the Chrysler plant, he quarreled with his wife and then reached for his shotgun, killing her, his daughter, and finally himself. An eleven-year-old Michael was left to find the bodies, and he vanished soon after. Now, for the old woman’s sake, Amos Walker takes up a cold scent. He expects to find nothing, but he’s in for an unpleasant surprise. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Loren D. Estleman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

U. S. Deputy Page Murdock is ordered by Federal Judge Harlan A. Blackthorne to Cape Hell, Mexico, to verify a report that former Confederate Captain Oscar Childress is raising an army to take over Mexico City—and then intends to turn north to rekindle the Civil War. Childress, it seems, has the weapons, wealth, and moral compass to do it. Unable to talk himself out of the mission, Murdock heads south on a steam train named El Espanto—The Ghost. With only Hector Cansado, an engineer who can't be trusted and Joseph, a Native American fireman with a few secrets of his own, Murdock hurtles through the murderous desert of a foreign land toward a man bent on wholesale massacre . . . unless Murdock can stop him.

In this outing, Walker goes "Downriver," which is a Detroiter's term for any part of Michigan that does not include the city. Actually, he goes to the Upper Peninsula to give a released con a ride back to Detroit. When he and the con get run off the road and the con hires him to help find 200,000 dollars from a heist for which he was convicted but which he did not commit, Walker has his hands full.From Publishers WeeklyThe eighth Amos Walker novel (Motor City Blue) may not have an especially surprising chief villain, but Estleman is still in the top of the class of private-eye storytellers. Here Walker's client is Richard DeVries, fresh out of prison after a 20-year stretch for arson and armored-car robbery during the 1967 Detroit riots. DeVries, who's black, says he was framed for a murder committed during the robbery, and Walker believes him. DeVries also considers the $200,000 never found after the robbery as his due: "I paid for it, and now it's mine." He identifies a rising auto executive as the "revolutionary" who got him to throw the fire-bomb. Soon Walker finds himself involved with a hotshot, would-be car magnate, his "ex-model" wife and a centenarian auto pioneer. By the violent ending, Walker has uncovered a computer scam and some ugly, 20-year-old secrets. Estleman's colorful characters, crackling dialgoue, rich plot, authentic Detroit setting and throwaway humoras usualwork very well. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As a detective on the mean streets of Detroit, Amos Walker has to make friends in low places. It’s part of the job. So when the incredibly successful madam Beryl Garnet needs somebody to fulfill her last dying wish, she turns to Walker. She hasn’t seen her son in a long, long time, and wants him to have her ashes when she’s gone just to let him know she hasn’t forgotten about him. Walker obliges her.Walker finds Garnet’s son, Delwayne, a Vietnam War protestor who has been living in Canada since the 1960s, and hands over his mother’s ashes. When Walker returns to Detroit, he is surprised to learn that Delwayne is dead and he, Walker, is the prime suspect.To clear his name, Walker must find the murderer. In the process he discovers another murder, of a prizefighter from the 1940s…Curtis Smallwood, Delwayne’s father. Walker knows he has his work cut out for him when he discovers that the two murders, fifty-three years apart, were committed with the very same gun.

A collection of classic reprints and four original stories featuring Sherlock Holmes In bringing to a close the adventures of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I am perforce reminded that he never, save on the occasion which, as you will now hear, brought his singular career to an end, consented to act in any mystery which was concerned with persons who made a livelihood by their pen. "I am not particular about the people I mix among for business purposes," he would say, "but at literary characters I draw the line." We were in our rooms in Baker Street one evening. I was (I remember) by the centre table writing out "The Adventure of the Man Without a Cork Leg" (which had so puzzled the Royal Society and all the other scientific bodies of Europe), and Holmes was amusing himself with a little revolver practice. It was his custom of a summer evening to fire round my head, just shaving my face, until he had made a photograph of me on the opposite wall, and it...

A riveting western novel starring beloved character Page Murdock from Spur Award-winning Author Loren D. Estleman!In the spring of 1896, after thirty years spent dispensing justice in the of Montana, Judge Harlan Blackthorne expires, leaving Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, his most steadfast officer, to escort his remains across the continent by rail.The long journey—interrupted from time to time by station stops for the public to pay its respects and for various marching bands to serenade the departed with his favorite ballad, "After the Ball"—gives Murdock plenty of opportunity to reflect upon the years of triumphs and tragedies he's seen first hand, always in the interest of bringing justice to a wilderness he, his fellow deputies, and the Judge played so important a role in its settlement.As the funeral train chugs through prairie, over mountains, and across rivers once ruled by buffalo herds, Indian nations, trappers, cowboys, U.S....