When Old Midnight Comes Along by Loren D. Estleman

Published by Macmillan/Forge Books on December 3, 2019

When Old Midnight Comes Along is the kind of detective novel that should be a model for the genre. Loren D. Estleman’s plot is tight and credible. He conveys the depth of his characters without exploring their backgrounds in unnecessary detail. His prose style is clear and uncluttered while retaining a literary flair. Estelman has distilled, in this 28th Amos Walker mystery, the essence of what a detective novel should be.

Francis Xavier Lawes, a prominent Detroit businessman, hires Amos to find his wife. That could be tricky since Paula Lawes has been missing for more than six years and in less than a year will be presumed dead. Lawes tells Amos he wants to know his wife’s fate because he plans to remarry and would like to get the declaration of death out of the way without delay. Lawes’ intended is Holly Pride, who began working for him as a receptionist before (in my uncharitable interpretation of her intent) she decided to become a gold digger.

Amos starts by charming Deborah Stonesmith at the Detroit Police Department to let him review the file regarding Paula’s disappearance (in other words, she wants Amos to get out of her hair). He learns that Lawes and his wife were overextended on vacation home mortgages and credit card debt. That brings Amos to the police detective who ran the investigation. John Alderdyce has moved on to private security, but he's convinced Lawes murdered Paula and regrets his inability to prove it.

A complicating fact involves Paula’s car, found abandoned near the site where a cop named Marcus Root was killed. A retired police commander, Albert White, tells Amos that Root was shot while he was following Paula’s car. Root’s notebook was missing from his patrol car, suggesting that Root was killed because he had information about Paula that his notebook (or Root) would have revealed.

Other key characters include Oakes Steadman, a former gang member who now works for the police as a gang consultant, George Hoyle, who was having an affair with Paula, and Andrea Dawson, a publicist who was working with Paula when she dropped off the grid. As Amos wears down his shoe leather, the information he gathers about Paula from each character becomes even more confusing. The confusion is compounded when he discovers that a ring — probably but not certainly Paula’s engagement ring — might be connected to a crime.

The various characters provide conflicting clues that Amos and the reader will need to sort out to discover Paula’s fate. The characters have the fullness of unique individuals, unlike the stock characters that so many genre writers recycle. Estleman creates atmosphere without dwelling on needless lessons in Detroit's architecture or political history. The solution to the mystery is clever and not easily guessed (at least not by me). Unlike many modern crime novelists, Estleman finds a plausible way to bring all the characters and clues together and leaves no loose ends dangling. When Old Midnight Comes Along is exactly what an old-school detective novel should be: entertaining, challenging, and satisfying.

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