Never Street(1997)

Loren D. Estleman

Neil Catalin, a video entrepreneur, had gone missing after watching Pitfall, a Dick Powell potboiler that featured a smoldering beauty, a hormone-driven private eye, and a murderously jealous lover. For detective Amos Walker, the truth behind Neil Catalin's disappearance is going to be found somewhere among those black-and-white film images - only the clues Walker finds are as ugly and real as a fat man with a gun. Catalin's femme fatale mistress, a would-be actress, claims she hasn't seen the victim in a year, and Catalin's business partner doesn't waste any time pointing Walker in the wrong direction. The detective's next step is to retrace Catalin's previous disappearance and pay a visit to idyllic Mackinac Island. Here, in a sanitorium, a seedy shrink is running a dangerous scam on the side. Meanwhile, down in the Motor City, a missing ninety-two grand from a series of video store knockovers is colliding with the Catalin case - and so is a series of murders. With a heavy Luger caressing his right kidney and a man in a noisy Camaro haunting his steps, Walker has become the auteur in a stark, unrolling nightmare of lies, double-crosses, and violence as brooding as storm clouds over southern Michigan.