When Amos Walker met his new client, retired pitcher Darius Fuller, he was in the middle of the most expensive lawn sale since "they put the Soviet Union on the block." Selling off his possessions to pay off the IRS and three ex wives might make some men bitter, but being broke and famous beats being plain broke, and besides, he's got a bigger problem on his mind. His daughter Deirdre is turning twenty five and coming into a two million plus trust fund, and he's afraid the sharks are closing in on her, especially in the form of her current boyfriend. So he asks Amos to look into shaking off the suitor, but naturally it doesn't turn out to be a walk in the ballpark.

So Amos takes the case, mostly because it's what he does, partly because he's still got a bit of the romantic in him. It shows in his musings offside, like this, "the worst part of the work is that on some level you hope the client is wrong." But Amos doesn't let that hope cloud his vision much. In fact, he doesn't miss a trick. He's nobody's muscle, but for a former baseball star and a concerned father, and for a thou a day, he'll be a bag man.

Amos follows the boyfriend around long enough to know he's not likely to bond with him, and that the father doesn't know the half of it, like how how his daughter is being used to pawn stolen goods for the no-goodnik. What Amos doesn't know is why said scum-in-law to be is so desperate for money, but he's starting to get an idea by the time dad tells him that the wedding has been pushed up. Unfortunately, when Amos goes to wave 50K under the bums nose he finds the apartment door unlocked, knows it for the bad sign it is, and walks away. Now, this shows uncommon good sense for a fictional P.I., but it does him little good, as the cops are already waiting to see who shows up at the scene of the crime. Which is murder, of course, but it's not the boyfriend.

Amos cracks wise a bit more than some folks like. Folks like the cops, and maybe his client, though I think they like pitching baseball metaphors over the mound. Actually, so does inspector John Allerdyce, who's been trading barbs with Amos "since they were calves." I'm just glad I get to sit in the bleachers and watch a pro at the top of his game.

I was just beginning to wonder if I was being too hard on the amateur sleuths trying to get themselves killed when I met Amos Walker. Its a pleasure to watch a man work who knows his job and isn't about to fall for the average setup. No, it takes an extraordinary setup to snag Amos, unfortunately for him, if not for us, the author has no trouble pitching screwballs his way.

Amos is an honest guy, and a straight shooter. Traits he gets, no doubt, from the author. While a lot of authors work hard to trick the reader into looking the wrong way while the killer steals bases. you don't get that from Estelman. You and Amos get to stand side by side looking at the mess folks make of life and sorting through it looking for the truth. Its a full dumpster, and there's plenty of mystery to be found just sorting through it.

With sixty something books to his name, I'd guess Loren D. Esteleman had paid his dues, but I'd be surprised if he hadn't been hitting them out of the ballpark from the start. In American Detective his spare prose flows like the best of them, meaning, of course, Chandler at the top of his game.

Normally I'm a voracious plot reader, burning through the pages for the action, but here, though the plot is nicely twisty, I'm more than happy to slow down enough to take in the scenery, colored by Amos' snappy comebacks and observations based on the bigger half of a life lived in other peoples problems. This is a book to enjoy a chapter at a time, with breaks to watch the play again in slo-mo in your mind before the next inning. Highly recommended.