A few weeks ago I checked Black and White Ball by Loren D. Estleman out of the library and finally got around to reading it. It’s book #27 in the Amos Walker series. For reference, the first Amos Walker novel, Motor City Blue, was published in 1986 — and it was the very first entry in my Book Lovers Journal in 1987! The most recent Walker novel is City Walls (#31), released in 2023, so I clearly have catching up to do.

Between 1987 and 1991 I read 8 of the first 10 Walker books. Then I didn’t pick up the series again until 2012, when I read #20, The Left-Handed Dollar. Next came #12, The Witchfinder, in 2022. So when I grabbed Black and White Ball (#27), I’d read 10 of the earlier books and none of #27–31. Honestly, until a few years ago I didn’t realize Estleman had taken the series that far. Now that I do, the TBR pile just grew.

Black and White Ball (Amos Walker #27)

The book reminded me quickly why I like this series: reading an Amos Walker novel feels like catching up with an old friend. The setup: Amos is hired by an old flame to track her cheating husband, who has also skimmed $600,000 from his company. Walker traces him to Canada. While Amos is trying to confirm the couple’s room number, a woman screams. By the time he reaches the room, the husband is dead and the window is open — the killer apparently gone.

After the police interrogation, Amos is told the hit was the work of professional killer Peter Macklin. Soon after, Macklin “introduces” himself by pressing a gun into the back of Amos’s neck from the backseat of Walker’s car. Macklin, in the middle of a divorce, has received a photo of his wife with a note demanding $100,000 — or she dies. He hires Amos to keep her safe. The threat comes from another hit man Macklin knows all too well.

My Thoughts (with Spoilers — at least I think they would be)

Reuniting with Old Friends

Reading Estleman’s Amos Walker always feels like traveling back in time to meet an old friend. Here, it’s like meeting two: Walker and Peter Macklin. Estleman brings them together for the first time in this novel. While Amos has anchored 30+ books, Macklin has headlined only a handful; I’ve read one — Roses Are Dead.

Walker Meets Macklin

Their paths cross at the Cabot Lodge in Toronto, where Amos arrives to help his client’s husband, Guy Lennert. The killer is Peter Macklin. Soon after, Macklin — facing a pending divorce — receives a note and photo of his second wife: pay $100,000 or she dies. He wants Walker to protect her. The twist? The would-be assassin is Macklin’s own son, Roger — a hitman like his father, but with a very different motivation.

A Killer’s Code and a Detective’s Morality

This puts ex-cop PI Amos Walker in a bind. He’s spent a career chasing men like Macklin, and now he has to help one. But saving a life means more to Walker than sticking rigidly to his personal code. Macklin, for his part, follows a cold professional ethic — not admirable, exactly, but consistent. The friction between Walker’s decency and Macklin’s “code” gives the story its moral backbone.

Family, Hatred, and Inherited Violence

There’s also a generational angle: how criminality — and hatred — gets passed down. Roger isn’t driven by the detached professionalism that defines his father; he’s fueled by resentment. That difference matters. It shifts the stakes from a tidy noir chess match to something more volatile and personal.

Shades of Gray

The title Black and White Ball is a neat bit of irony. Neither Walker nor Macklin operates in purely black-and-white terms. They both move through gray areas — different grays, for sure — and that moral complexity is what elevates this book beyond a standard cat-and-mouse.

The Bottom Line

Black and White Ball is a strong addition to the Amos Walker series. It works as a brisk thriller, but it also wrestles with ethics, loyalty, and family damage — which makes it linger. If you’re dipping into Walker again (or for the first time), this is a rewarding stop.

Links

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Wikipedia

About Loren D. Estelman

Loren D. Estleman is an American writer of detective and Western fiction. He is known for a series of crime novels featuring the investigator Amos Walker. Wikipedia

Born: 1952 (age 73 years), Ann Arbor, MI

Partner: Deborah Morgan (1993–)

Awards: Spur Award for Best Western Novel · See more

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Ok so I had started this post as a welcome back post, but Ill’ll save that doesn’t the next post let’s just get back to the mysteries. And here’s a good one…….

A Good Kill (Detective P.T. Marsh #3)

Today I finished A Good Kill by John McMahon.  It is book 40 for 2021 and book 3 in McMahon’s Detective P.T.Marsh series. I read The Good Detective, the first book in the series in December of 2020 and book two The Evil Men Do in February of this year.

The Story

P.T. Is a detective with the Mason Falls police department in northern Georgia. In this instalment P.T.and his partner Remy Martin are called to a Magnet school in Mason Falls where a potentially active shooter is holding three students and a teacher hostage in the Art Room.

The shooter has already killed one teacher. Soon P.T. has the shooter in his crosshairs….should he take the shot?   A call from the Georgia governor to whom Marsh owes a favor and a threatening move by the shooter results in an answer of yes. It was a “good Kill right? It’s question that haunts P.T.for the rest of the book.

After  the shooting case is turned over to the Feds, P.T. and Remy are assigned to a double homicide investigation. In addition P.T is still haunted by the murder (made to look like an accident) off his wife and son. Marsh is still trying to find who hired his wife’s killer and why?

My Thoughts on John McMahon and the P.T.Marsh Series

I have really  really enjoyed all three of the books in this series! I guess that’s why I’ve read all three in around seven months! Everything about these books is terrific. Both the characters and the storylines are interesting, suspenseful and believable.

So Check Them Out IN ORDER!! As for me, I’ll have to wait until 2022 when John MCMahon will be introducing a new character!

Series Links

AAuthor’s Website
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About John McMahon

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Originally posted in December 2018 -updated Nov 2025

Nightblind is the second book in Ragnar Jonnasson’s Dark Iceland series. It is the first book by Jonasson that I have read. Since the I have read 4 out of the 6 books in the series. It seems that I am constantly re

The Story

Siglufjörður is an isolated village only accessible via a small mountain tunnel. The small close-knit town is one where no one locks their doors. In Nightblind their world is rocked when a policeman is killed at a quiet house with a disturbing past.

The murdered officer was Ari Thór’s partner. Thor would have been on-duty the night of the murder but he had called out sick. Thor and the town’s former police chief are tasked with the job of unraveling the mystery. It’s complex mystery involving the compromised new mayor. Along the way the reader is also given glimpses of a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik where a patient writes about his confinement and the reason for it!

My Thoughts

All in all, it was a good visit. I enjoyed both the plot and the characters. Nightblind is the second book in Jonasson’s  Dark Iceland series.and you can bet I’ll be visiting Iceland again. First, to find out what happened prior to Nightblind in Snowblind and then after in Blackout! I can’t wait.

Ragnar Jonasson – “IS THIS THE BEST CRIME WRITER IN THE WORLD TODAY?” (THE TIMES) // “NEXT-GEN NORDIC STAR” (LA TIMES)

After visiting Ragnar’s website I discovered the following

Nightblind has won the 2016 Mörda Award – Dead Good Reader Award for Most Captivating Crime in Translation. Nightblind, translated by Quentin Bates and published by Orenda Books, is is the second book in the Dark Iceland series to be published in the UK.

Links

Author’s Website
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Amazon

About Ragnar Jonasson

Jonasson is author of the award winning and international bestselling Dark Iceland series.

His debut Snowblind, first in the Dark Iceland series, went to number one in the Amazon Kindle charts shortly after publication. The book was also a no. 1 Amazon Kindle bestseller in Australia. Snowblind has been a paperback bestseller in France.

Nightblind won the Dead Good Reader Award 2016 for Most Captivating Crime in Translation.

Snowblind was called a “classically crafted whodunit” by THE NEW YORK TIMES, and it was selected by The Independent as one of the best crime novels of 2015 in the UK.

Rights to the Dark Iceland series have been sold to UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, Poland, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Morocco,”’

Goodreads

• The Mörda Award was a specific category within the Dead Good Reader Awards, celebrating the best in translated crime fiction. The Dead Good Reader Awards were annual, public-voted prizes for crime and thriller novels, presented during the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, UK. 

• Purpose: To recognize and celebrate a captivating crime novel that has been translated into English.
• Winner example: In 2016, the Mörda Award for Captivating Crime in Translation was won by Ragnar Jonasson’s Nightblind,

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Shut Your Eyes Tight – John Verdon

Originally posted on March 14, 2012. Updated October 2025 with new links, images, and notes.

So yesterday I did it. I reached what I thought was an unreachable goal. When I finished Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon, I reached my goal of reading 60 books in 2017!

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon is the second book in his Dave Guerney series. The main character in the book, Dave  Guerney, is a retired New York City homicide detective. He is a gifted detective and is the most decorated detective in NYPD history.

 An intriguing Case Comes to Dave

Fellow NYPD detective Jack Hardwick brings the case that forms the plot for Shut Your Eyes Tight  to Dave. The case is four months old case and involves the beheading of a bride on her wedding day. Jack brings Dave the case because he thinks the police are moving in the wrong direction. And he believes the Dave the Super Detective can use his skills to solve the case.

Initially, the case seems  to be a pretty open and shut. The new bride, of a noted psychologist, was the victim.   While the killer appears to be a Mexican who came to work for the psychologist as a gardener and rose to the position of assistant to said psychologist. The Mexican was the last person to see the bride alive and he has now vanished!

But after for months the police are no closer to finding the killer, than the day of the murder. Hardwock believes there is much more to the case than  do the two officers who are heading the investigation. He brought the case to Guerney for that reason . He believes that the great detective Guerney can solve the mystery.

Dave thinks the case is intriguing. His wife Madeleine sees it as a diruption of their new idyllic life.  Despite Madeleine‘s objections, Dave decides to help the victim’s mother and investigate for two weeks. Then report what he found to the mother and the police.

Dave Finds Out the Case IS like an Onion

When Jack Hartwicks brings  the  case to Dave, he says the case was like an onion. The removal of each layer reveals something new. And that’s just what Dave’s investigating reveals.

As Dave investigates his discoveries  turn the simple slam dunk case into the search for a serial killer! The question then becomes can he ever get to the center of the onion,  before he or his wife are the necat victims!

Bottom Line

I am now a fan of Dave Gurney the character and John Versin the writer. I look forward to moving onto book # 3 Let the Devil Sleep.  In fact I just checked the e-book editon out of my library! 

Anyway I enjoy the characters that Verson has created,  both Dave and Madeleine and the surrounding cast. I also enjoy the plots that Verdon has created.  The storyline in Shut Your Eyes Tight was like an onion and each new discovery gave the case a new look until the final pages!

Goodreads Rating. 3.97  My Rating 4.0. So Check it Out

Update Note : Since this post was written in 2012 John Verson has written six more Dave Gurney books. I have read one of them book 1 # 3 Let the Devil Sleep . I think it’s time to pickup this series again! Book #4 Peter Pan Must Die is in my Kindle Library!

Links

Author’s Website
Goodreads
Amazon

John Verdon

John P. Verdon is an American novelist. In 2010, Crown/Random House published his first mystery thriller, Think of a Number, the debut novel in the Dave Gurney detective series. Wikipedia

Born: 1942 (age 83 years), The Bronx, New York, NY

Education: Fordham University, Regis High School

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