YOU KNOW WHO KILLED ME

Amos Walker’s 24th case takes him from Detroit to the suburban wilds of Iroquois Heights, where the natives are just as restless.

Despite the posters with Donald Gates’ image she’s plastered all over town, his wife, Amelie, still doesn’t know who killed him. Nor does Lt. Ray Henty, who remembers Walker from his days on the Detroit force. So when the $10,000 reward an anonymous donor offers through Christ Episcopal Church flushes out every busybody in Iroquois Heights, Henty asks Walker, who’s just coming off rehab for the Vicodin he used to get over the trauma of his last case (Don’t Look for Me, 2014), to follow up with the most promising callers. Things happen right away, though not the things Henty had in mind. Christ Episcopal’s the Rev. Florence Melville, Don’s pre-Amelie girlfriend, hires Walker to find his killer. Roy Thompson, a maintenance man in Don’s office who heard traffic-light computer programmer Yuri Yako complain that Don had done no real work ever since installing the system years ago, is killed. So is Yako, whose last name is really Crowley. With three victims to worry about, Henty starts to get hot around the collar, especially after Deputy U.S. Marshal Mary Ann Thaler, of Witness Security, shows up to put her oar in. In short order, red flags go up concerning the Ukrainian mob, the federal spook on Walker’s back, and the Ritalin Don and Amelie’s 10-year-old son is taking. But Walker distinguishes the real leads from the phonies until he does indeed know who killed Don Gates—though not in time to claim that reward.

Modest, tidy and fast-moving: a pleasing lesser entry in Walker’s dossier.