Loren D. Estleman

"In the spring of 1896, after thirty years spent dispensing justice in Montana, Judge Harlan Blackthorne expires, leaving Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, his most steadfast officer, to escort his remains across the continent by rail. The long journey is interrupted from time to time by station stops for the public to pay its respects, and for various marching bands to serenade the departed with his favorite ballad, "After the Ball." This gives Murdock...

"Bela Lugosi's Frankenstein screen test puts Valentino in the picture for murder. Everyone knows the Frankenstein monster was played by Boris Karloff. His portrayal is so famous that the play Arsenic and Old Lace was filled with Karloff/monster jokes--even when the part of the monstrously deformed villain was played by another actor. But before Karloff's memorable portrayal, another famous 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of...

Film detective Valentino is summoned to the estate of Ignacio Bozel to collect a prized donation to the university's movie library: Bleak Street, a film from the classic noir period, thought lost for more than sixty years. Bleak Street was never released. Its star, Van Oliver, a gifted and charismatic actor with alleged ties to the mob, disappeared while the project was in post-production, presumably murdered by gangland rivals: another one of Hollywood's...

Publisher Annotation: Loren D. Estleman's most popular characters, PI Amos Walker and hit man Peter Macklin, are together in one story for the first time in Black and White Ball! Detroit hit man Peter Macklin forces private eye Amos Walker to furnish protection for Laurie, Macklin's estranged wife, while Macklin tracks down the party who has threatened to kill her. The man Walker's client suspects cannot be ignored; as his own grown son, Roger Macklin...

UCLA film archivist and sometime film detective Valentino doesn't take friend and former actress Beata Limerick very seriously when she tells him that she quit acting because of the curse on blond actresses. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Thelma Todd, Sharon Tate... they all had more fun, but none of them made it out of the business alive, and according to Limerick, she wasn't taking any chances. But when Valentino finds Beata's body staged the...

Posing as Brother Bernard Sebastian of the Church of Evangelical Truth, Murdock dons a clerical collar to worm his way into the good graces and confidences of the wary residents of Owen, Texas, in order to stop a gang of ruthless bandits who have been terrorizing the Texas panhandle.

"Paperback Jack is a brand new historical thriller from Grand Master Loren D. Estleman: lurid paperback covers promised sex and danger, but what went on behind the scenes was nearly as spicy as the adventures between the covers. 1946. Fresh from the War in Europe, hack writer Jacob Heppleman discovers a changed world back home. The pulp magazines he used to write for are dying, replaced by a revolutionary new publishing racket: paperback novels, offering...

"Locked in a deadly feud, cowboys Randy Locke and Frank Farmer have spent decades attempting to annihilate each other any time they are within shooting distance. So far, the men are even. One of Frank's bullets has given Randy a permanent limp. Vain Frank wears a prosthetic ear, his own lost to Randy's assault. If either of them remembers the original reason for the feud, it seems moot now. Their quest for revenge has led them on a merry chase through...