In Boston, I suppose I ought buy Robert B Parker’s thrillers, but it’s been decades since he tipped from pastiche into self-parody. I’ve always thought that the reason America is full of serial killers is that they kill women on the off-chance that their victims might resemble Parker’s heroine Susan Silverman, and who can blame them?
But I found instead a work of Loren D. Estleman, the most under-rated thriller writer I know of in the USA (the most under-rated British thriller writer was the Gavin Lyall, who died this summer, and whose books can be reread over and over for the beauty and elegance of their clockwork).
Estleman doesn’t do character in his Amos Walker books. But he does dialogue and atmosphere superbly.“Francisco requested me to tell you that you won’t be out anythign for the inconveniance.” “I laugh at money, How much am I laughing at?”