Loren Estelman is a prolific writer. The page that’s at the front most novels that lists all the author’s works requires a bible font (i.e. really type \ud83d\ude42 to be able to fit them all on one page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The character that made him famous is Amos Walker<\/strong>, a wise-cracking Detroit private eye who I’ve loved for decades! Some time ago he decided to clone his very successful big city gumshoe into into Page Murdock<\/strong>, a wise-cracking, hard-boiled U.S. Marshall in 1890’s Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These two are the dead center of the Estelman world for me. They are kind of the same guy, with their snappy dialog and their way with the ladies (although the lady thing never seems to work out … by the end of each book they are always back to their bachelor ways).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main difference is that Walker is beholden to a different “boss” each book, because he’s a private eye who someone hires to do a thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Murdock on the other hand is beholden to the same boss every darned time! He is pretty much owned by Judge Harlan Blackthorne, the only Fereral law in the vast territory of Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Estelman is a history buff. A number of his books, both westerns and modern involve an actual historical event. All the Page Murdock books center around the Judge. He is painted in such detail over all the books that I thought HE was an historical character, but Wikipedia tells me no, he springs from Estelman’s imagination!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is might be the last Page Murdock book. In the first sentence of the book the judge keels over dead while pronouncing sentence on some poor fellow. Page endures, but in this book he’s offered at least five different jobs, competent fellow that he is. He accepts none, so it doesn’t look good for the extension of the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the Judge is dead, and his instructions require that Murdock accompany his widow and casket on the loooong train ride across the nothern US to Wilmington Delaware. There’s the usual wise-cracking (the Judge is ordering him around even from the grave), some remimiscing abut earlier cases, a log of history and local color, then after a few chapters, final an actual plot!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n The train conductor disappears, and soon it’s apparent that someone is trying to kill … someone. It’s not clear till the end of the book whether Murdock or the Judge’s widow is the target, but since his job is to protect her, they both get the drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some funny interludes with taciturn Norwegian dirt farmers, then the final drama happens in turn of the 20th century Minneapolis. There was a really heart-tugging plot twist at the end, and over all the book was a lot of fun, if a little slow in the middle sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Loren Estelman is a prolific writer. The page that’s at the front most novels that lists all the author’s works requires a bible font (i.e. really type \ud83d\ude42 to be able to fit them all on one page. The character that made him famous is Amos Walker, a wise-cracking Detroit private eye who I’ve loved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[38,33],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-murdock","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1464,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}