Jitterbug

A Tough Town In A Tough Time -- Detroit during World War II was where the United States' furious effort to out-manufacture the Germans and Japanese occurred. Industry imported workers to replace men gone to war -- Southern whites and blacks working side by side fo the first time. Detroit had it all: rationing, the black-market, the Mafia, fortunes to be made, a new kind of jazz for seething summer nights -- it was a powder keg.Through this tense, troubled world cuts a killer, a self-appointed soldier savaging ordinary people, the elderly and the defenseless. Lieutenant Zagreb's most important job is to keep the city from exploding, then to catch a mad killer with a cop roster of 4Fs and near-retirees. And finally, he must save his own soul. He cannot succeed at all three.Wartime Detroit is dazzingly recreated in Loren Estleman's latest tour de force crime novel. Great auto manufacturers labor mightily; blacks struggle for an economic toehold; whites strive for decent lives in the chaos. The climax, during America's nastiest race riots, is unforgettable.Amazon.com ReviewOne of the most interesting new trends in crime fiction is the regional historical thriller, and nobody does it better than Loren D. Estleman, whose books about Detroit's past--Aces and Eights, Billy Gashade, City of Widows, Edsel, Red Highway, Stamping Ground, Stress--turn that city's muscular and often bloody heritage into absorbing fiction.In Jitterbug, Estelman shows us Detroit during World War II, where Lieutenant Maximillian "Zag" Zagreb heads up a team of overage misfits at the police department's racket squad. A particularly nasty killer called Kilroy appears to be targeting and then slicing up hoarders of ration coupons, and Lieutenant Zagreb's investigators are the thin red line deployed to stop him. They use some extremely unorthodox tactics and find themselves in the midst of a race riot, but Kilroy continues to elude them and fight his private war against profiteers. The heavy is a masterful creation, a believable psychopath who wears a stolen Army Air Force uniform and has made up a heroic career to cover his rejection by military psychiatrists. "On those rare occasions when he did not stand outside himself," Estelman writes, "he could hear the thump of the mortars and chomping of the heavy machine guns behind their sandbags on the hills." --Dick AdlerFrom Publishers WeeklyWriting with wit and carefully crafting a chilling suspense plot, Estleman (Journey of the Dead) delivers another spine-tingling crime novel set in Detroit. This time, however, unlike in his Amos Walker novels (Never Street, 1997, etc.), the action tales place during WWII. The heat is on Racket Squad leader Lieutenant Maximilian Zagreb and his three detectives (known collectively as The Four Horsemen for their unorthodox, brutal, mostly illegal methods) when someone starts killing people for hoarding ration coupons. Using some artful manipulation and some very unsubtle pressure, Zagreb leans on a couple of unlikely sources for help. Frankie "The Conductor" Orr, a local mob boss, and Dwight Littlejohn, a black riveter in an airplane factory, are unwilling participants in Zagreb's efforts to smoke out the killer dubbed Kilroy by the newspapers. As the cops twist arms and Kilroy's victims pile up, Detroit explodes in a bloody race riot that summer of 1943, making Zagreb think that Anzio might be safer. Terrific, tough characters, snappy dialogue, crackling action and some imaginative applications of the third degree, make this a triumph for Estleman. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.