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The Lioness is the Hunter: An Amos Walker Mystery    by Loren D. Estleman Amazon.com order for
Lioness is the Hunter
by Loren D. Estleman
Order:  USA  Can
Forge, 2017 (2017)
Hardcover, e-Book
* *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

The Lioness is the Hunter is the twenty-sixth in Loren D. Estleman's Detroit series starring hard-boiled dick Amos Walker, and this time it seems like an old nemesis (a femme fatale of course) might have come back from the dead with vengeance in mind.

As the story opens, Carl Fannon (a wealthy entrepreneur) hires Walker to track down his partner Emil Haas, who's gone missing at a critical juncture in their financial negotiations to buy the historic Sentinel Building. And there's no shortage of clients for the PI as Haas shows up soon afterwards, wanting Walker to meet him in that same (empty) building to talk privately. Walker goes there as directed but finds only his original client, now a corpse in a basement vault. The cops are not happy that Walker doesn't immediately notify them.

Complications continue, first with the addition of yet another client to the roster, Haas's daughter Gwendolyn (her father again missing). There's a link to China and the possibility that Madam Sing ('a pandemic in Prada') is involved - and she was supposedly executed, with DNA evidence to prove it. It seems that she might have been using Fannon and Haas to rebuild her fortune, in order to again 'put the destruction of western culture on the table.' Naturally, Amos enlists his old friend, Barry Stackpole, in the quest, which he barely survives.

As always, Estleman delivers the expected ingredients of classic noir - the cynical PI, wisecracking dialogue, and femme fatale - and then some. Have we finally seen the end of Madame Sing? According to Amos, 'She's still out there, waiting, like a lioness in tall grass.'

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