King of the Corner

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Recently released from prison, former major league baseball player Doc Miller takes a job as driver and muscle man for a tough bail bondsman and finds himself in a world of guns, greed, and murder. Reprint. NYT. PW. From Publishers WeeklyThis final volume in Estleman's Detroit trilogy (after Whiskey River and Motown ) is a superb thriller that may cause an uproar in America's sixth-largest city. Doc Miller, once an ace reliever for the Tigers, is sprung after seven years in prison, a sentence he earned when a guest at a party he threw OD'ed on cocaine. Fat, flamboyant bail bondsman Maynard Ance offers six-foot-five Doc a job as escort while Ance goes after a skipped client, Wilson McCoy (last seen in Motown). McCoy, former Black Panther and leader of the Marshals of Mahomet--"revolutionaries" who raise money by selling drugs--eventually turns up a suicide. Accepting Ance's offer of full-time employment, Doc is plunged into an intricate series of events in a fast-moving narrative that veers from a black funeral to a fancy fund-raiser, with danger at every turn. The pleasure of the intricate plot is enhanced by the cast of vivid ? colorful an awk adj to use in describing a multiracial castgood point! characters, led by Ance, who likens a pesky reporter to "a prostate the size of Ohio." Other players include a genteel black former madam who knows where all the bodies are buried, Mahomet's elegant widow, and some ballplaying Marshals who run dope. Real-life Mayor Coleman Young is depicted in the last chapter as the owner of a crack house. As in the earlier Detroit books, the climax here is violent, the denouement cynical. Estleman, who also writes the Amos Walker mysteries, knows and somehow still loves Detroit, not unlike its other bard, Elmore Leonard. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsA paroled felon takes a walk on the wild side of the law in this relatively slight yet satisfying conclusion to Estleman's Detroit crime trilogy (Whiskey River, Motor City). Kevin ``Doc'' Miller isn't just any ex-con; he's a former Detroit Tigers pitching star sent to prison on a morals rap. Back on the streets after seven years, Doc finds a new, more dangerous Detroit--one fueled not by the illegal booze of Prohibition-set Whiskey River, or the corrupt unions of 60's-set Motor City, but by crack cocaine. As a parolee, Doc means to steer clear of crime, but his new job as a John Deere salesman pays little and bores him silly. So when tough bail bondsman Maynard Ance offers him a job as his driver, Doc jumps at the chance--and is soon helping Ance bail out Detroit's top black drug-dealers and political radicals. Doc's an amiable guy, as well as a celeb of sorts, so soon he's also organized a weekend sandlot baseball game played by his new acquaintances--drug-dealers, a cop, and his own nerdy nephew, whom he's trying to make a man of--and he's escorting the young widow of a legendary black radical martyr to a testimonial dinner, thus attracting the attention not only of a sexy journalist but also of longtime Detroit mayor Coleman A. Young. Beneath this newfound success, though, trouble brews: one of Ance's old clients, a top drug-dealing black radical, has killed a corrupt cop--and Doc, pressured by another cop to help find the killer, gets caught up in a dirty political war that eventually leads to a tragic death and takes him into a tense showdown with Mayor Coleman himself. Neither as colorful nor as vigorous as the earlier volumes- -but, still, a pleasing if rather rambling mystery-thriller boasting a likable lead, nice baseball metaphors, and a boldly chilling portrait of Coleman A. Young as a devil incarnate. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.