Product Description

Detroit is no place for virgins, or gentlemen. Walker, who is neither, follows the 50-year-old trail of a stolen manuscript across the bleak landscape of a dead city, coming face to face with the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2278338 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Amos Walker, Detroit PI, revisits the past in the 13th entry in an estimable hard-boiled series (The Witchfinder, etc.). In the echoing, nearly empty galleries of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Walker agrees to accompany a curator on a private mission to recover a recently stolen medieval illuminated manuscript, the Hours of the title. But in the rundown skin-flick theater where the transaction is to take place, Walker is distracted by a young woman and then shot at. The curator, his package, the woman and shooter disappear. The woman turns out to be the young wife ("she was pushing twenty but not hard enough to dent it") of the theater owner, a notorious and wealthy porn kingAand rare book collectorAconfined to a wheelchair. Also involved in the shooting is Earl North, the man who killed Walker's beloved first boss, Dale Leopold, 20 years before, a crime for which North went free. Vivid memories of Leopold combine with the debilitating effects of the flu and midwinter in Motor City to keep Walker on a bitter edge until, the flu broken and a connection between crimes old and new made, readers are led to the fitting conclusion. Like all Estleman offerings, this one comes with extraordinarily observant narration, intelligent dialogue, memorable charactersAand style to spare. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Detroit private eye Amos Walker acts as bodyguard during a blackmail transaction involving a 15th-century illuminated manuscript. During the exchange, however, someone tries to kill him. Quality stuff, sure to be in demand.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
When Detroit Private Investigator Amos Walker agrees to help retrieve a priceless medieval illuminated manuscript called "The Hours of the Virgin," he expects the job to be routine and short-lived. However, when someone tries to kill him and corpses start turning up, he realizes that the case has ties to the unsolved murder of his partner twenty years before. Kenneth delivers a fully voiced performance that isn't always successful. The voice of Amos Walker is good, but differentiating some of the other characters is difficult at times because of the similarity of voices. But the voice of Strangeways, supposedly British/South African, misses the mark entirely and comes off sounding more akin to German. The plot is intriguing, with plenty of twists and turns captured nicely by Kenneth, who varies the pacing and injects just the right note of excitement and drama to keep the listener tuned in. S.S.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine