Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (28 page)

Louisa Rudeen helmed the Fawcett Books reissues of the first ten titles in mass-market paperback, widely distributing them in stylish packages. At Brilliance Corporation, Eileen Hutton brought Amos Walker to audio for the first time. My association with all the editors I’ve worked with on the series has run in direct opposition to the old aphorism that an editor is never your friend.

From 2000 through 2004, the late Byron Preiss returned the early Walkers to print through his I-Books trade paperback line, introducing the character to a new generation and the twenty-first century.

Supporters who have passed on are too many, and never forgotten. In addition to Cathleen Jordan and Byron Preiss they include Ray and Barbara Puechner, my first literary agents; former Detroiter Phil Thomas, longtime reviewer with the Associated Press and an early Walker booster; Neal Shine, legendary editor-in-chief of the
Detroit Free Press
; and Professor Curtis Stadtfeld, my mentor at Eastern Michigan University and for many years afterward. Amos Walker survives in part because they lived.

I’m deeply grateful to Millie Puechner and Dominick Abel, whose performance and succor have blasted the stereotype of the venal literary agent to bits.

Readers who have embraced the series from Eight Mile Road to the Ginza Strip are never far from my thoughts. Their patience and loyalty have been fixtures as dependable as Walker’s 1970 Cutlass.

Finally, I give thanks to my wife, Deborah Morgan, who has sacrificed time from her own writing career to promote the Walker books as well as the rest of my work, with great success. She’s a better man than us both.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Loren D. Estleman has written more than sixty novels. He has netted four Shamus Awards for detective fiction, five Spur Awards for Western fiction, and three Western Heritage Awards, among his many professional honors.
Infernal Angels
is the twenty-first Amos Walker mystery. He lives with his wife, author Deborah Morgan, in Michigan.

B
OOKS BY
L
OREN
D. E
STLEMAN

Kill Zone

Roses Are Dead

Any Man’s Death

Motor City Blue

Angel Eyes

The Midnight Man

The Glass Highway

Sugartown

Every Brilliant Eye

Lady Yesterday

Downriver

Silent Thunder

Sweet Women Lie

Never Street

The Witchfinder

The Hours of the Virgin

A Smile on the Face of the Tiger

City of Widows
*

The High Rocks
*

Billy Gashade
*

Stamping Ground
*

Aces & Eights
*

Journey of the Dead
*

Jitterbug
*

Thunder City
*

The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association
*

The Master Executioner
*

Black Powder, White Smoke
*

White Desert
*

Sinister Heights

Something Borrowed, Something Black
*

Port Hazard
*

Poison Blonde
*

Retro
*

Little Black Dress
*

Nicotine Kiss
*

The Undertaker’s Wife
*

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion
*

American Detective
*

Gas City
*

Frames
*

The Branch and the Scaffold
*

Alone
*

The Book of Murdock
*

Roy & Lillie: A Love Story
*

The Left-Handed Dollar
*

Infernal Angels
*

*
A Forge Book

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

INFERNAL ANGELS

Copyright © 2011 by Loren D. Estleman

All rights reserved.

Edited by James Frenkel

A Forge
^®
eBook

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Estleman, Loren D.

Infernal angels / Loren D. Estleman.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-1955-5

1.  Private investigators—Fiction.   2.  Drug traffic—Fiction.   3.  Detroit (Mich.)—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3555.S84I64 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011013480

First Edition: July 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-7579-7

First Forge eBook Edition: July 2011