Sinister Heights (The Amos Walker Series #16)
More than two decades after his introduction inMotor City Blue, Amos Walker   is still the same cynical, computer-illiterate, lone-wolf Detroit private eye he  always was. He hasn't even bothered to update his hard-boiled patter. "I got out  of the robe and into the shower," Walker explains partway throughSinister  Heights, "scraped off the Cro-Magnon growth of the night, put on a fresh  suit from the cleaners, and drove to the office, where I sat around making a  good impression on the walls until the telephone rang at ten."However, it's the pairing of unreconstructed gumshoe with modern malevolence  that makes Loren Estleman's stories interesting. InSinister Heights,  Walker is hired by the fetching young widow of powerful auto maker Leland  Stutch. She wants him to locate her hubby's illegitimate offspring so she can  share with them her inheritance--and thereby avoid future lawsuits. But the  would-be heirs have troubles beyond the monetary. Stutch's granddaughter is on  the run from an abusive spouse, and Walker's efforts to help her only lead to  her son's kidnapping, the violent death of one of the PI's oldest women friends,  a cinematic assault (by 18-wheeler trucks) on a suburban car factory, and a  surprise Stutch progeny who hopes to captureallof the late magnate's  millions.Estleman's cops and politicians are caricatures, and he doesn't give his  protagonist much emotional complexity (though Walker does bare a bit of beating  heart in this book's fine closing sequence). But he makes up for these faults  with his polished plot, a talent for fleshing out characters with a minimum of  words, and a robust nostalgia for Detroit's heyday that almost makes you think  fondly of belching smokestacks.--J. Kingston Pierce