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September 11
Hardback
• Paperback
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
by Loren D. Estleman
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Reviewed by Ted Fitzgerald
Having sent Amos Walker through something
of an emotional wringer avenging his mentor's
murder in last year's The Hours of the Virgin,
Loren Estleman lets his signature character have
some fun in A Smile of the Face of the Tiger. Fun,
that is, if your definition of the word extends to
murder, deceit, sexual betrayal, cracked ribs, black
eyes and a book-signing at Borders.
The last is a lot more dangerous than it might
seem, as the signer is an ex-hit man turned celebrity
author by the name of Glad Eddie Cypress. Cypress'
path crosses with Walker's as the Detroit shamus
searches for a rediscovered author of 1950s
paperback originals who abruptly returned a
publisher's advance for a new book, then vanished
back into anonymity. The publisher in question is
the luminous Louise Starr, who longtime readers
will remember from Esteman's Shamus Award-
winning 1984 novel Sugartown as one of the few
women who can make the usually unflappable
Walker trip over his tongue and walk into walls.
She continues to work her wiles on a more-or-less
wiser Walker.
The missing writer is Eugene Booth, whose first
novel was a hard-boiled opus inspired by Detroit's
1943 race riot and whose inside knowledge of a
particular event during the riot may have
prompted his wife's murder. A combination of
legwork, intuition and interviews with a former
model for paperback covers and the son of a
paperback cover artist leads Walker from a trailer
camp to a lakefront motel in Northern Michigan
where Booth unburdens his secret. But a
subsequent death sends Walker back to Detroit and
four decades into the past to solve the murder of
Allison Booth.
As he often does, Estleman is writing about the
inevitable collision between a spurious present and
an angry past that will no longer remain silent.
This is one of those books where the dead are so
vividly recalled by the living that they become,
without ever a word or a scene, critical participants
in the story. And in this case, a dead artist, a
murdered wife, the wartime race riot, organized
crime, the collector mentality, police corruption,
book publishing and the human animal's
unparalleled skill at self-delusion blend together
until it becomes nearly impossible to separate one
from another. Yet Estleman skillfully ensures that
each element plays its role and that, in the end,
each has its place in the solution.
It's all presented with Estleman's trademarks:
vivid descriptions, chin music with attitude, and a
wide, enveloping current of dry wit, particularly in
his digs at publishing, politics, and the amorality of
the cult of celebrity. And if Estleman is putting a
few more smiles on readers' lips this time out, he's
also serious about his characters, Eugene Booth in
particular. While Booth is pitiable in many ways,
Estleman's portrait of a man whose writing career
foundered on a combination of compromise, booze,
self-loathing and guilt is potent and sympathetic.
Estleman dedicates the book to a dozen-plus
paperback writers, most successful, but a couple--
like many unnamed others--who battled demons
not unlike Eugene Booth's, saw their careers erode
and died in obscurity. A Smile on the Face of the
Tiger is a note of thanks to those craftsmen and
entertainers from someone who knows. And like
many of those writers' books, it's fast-moving blood
and thunder, pure entertainment. And
if a sharp
reader can figure out a few things before the
denouement (especially if one reflects on the
limerick that provides the book's title), that doesn't
ruin anything. You're buying the whole package
and this one is well constructed and colorfully
wrapped. If Smile were a vintage paperback, it
would be graded very good to fine.
And if Amos Walker as well was a vintage
paperback? Well, his physical condition would
have to be graded as good to very good (a little
foxing around the edges, a tear here and there,
some possible spine damage given all the blows he
takes this time out, but generally intact); his
character, however, can still be rated as fine and,
overall, he's still in mint condition after 20
years. Now, that's shelf life.
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