Amos Walker is a hard-boiled private detective out of Detroit. He has been featured in twelve novels. A brand new Amos Walker mystery is now in the bookstores. The title of the book is The Hours Of The Virgin. The writer of the Amos Walker series is Loren D. Estleman. Hours Of The Virgin was published by The Mysterious Press and copyrighted in 1999.
Amos is approached by an old acquaintance, Merlin Gilly. It seems that someone Merlin knows has had a book stolen. It's just not your average book, either. It's a 15th century manuscript called The Hours Of The Virgin. It was stolen from the Detroit Institute of Arts. The thief is ransoming the manuscript. Harold Boyette wants Amos to act as the go-between in the transaction.
The exchange, money for the manuscript, is supposed to happen in a sleazy adult theater, The Tomcat Theater. When Amos attempts the exchange, a woman sets down next to him. Is she the contact? Then someone tries to shoot Amos. What seems to be a low-key exchange is now something else entirely.
His old friend John Alderdyce is in the vicinity of the shooting and drops in. The shooter and the woman who sat down next to Amos are nowhere to be seen. Alderdyce wants some answers. And so does Amos.
The trail leads back to the DIA. There, Amos finds that Boyette no longer works for DIA. He'd been fired. There was something to do with another employee, Earl North. It seems that a long time ago, North had killed Walker's partner, Dale Leopold. The cops never could find the gun that North used on Dale, so he got away with the murder.
What happened to the manuscript is a puzzle Amos wants to solve. Especially when one expert claims that it doesn't really exist. Boyette would seem to have the right answers but he's disappeared. Amos gets to meet the owner of the Tomcat Theater, Gordon Strangeways. He has a stake in finding the manuscript. Mr. Strangeways also has a rather young wife, who may have been the woman who sat next to Amos at the theater. But Strangeways claims that his wife is out of town.
Amos tries to balance the current case with trying to finally nail North for Dale's death.
With twists at every turn of the page, The Hours Of The Virgin is a top-notch mystery. This book is classic Estleman. Amos Walker is the modern day Sam Spade or Philip Marlow.