Don't Look for Me by Loren Estleman

It was shaping up to be the damnedest disappearing act I'd covered in a long, long time.

You can tell a lot about a man by what he puts on his feet.

But I know women, in so far as a man can know them, which is damn little.

Loren Estleman, Don't Look for Me (Tom Doherty Associates, 2014).

The best pulp detective writers are rooted in particular places:  John D. MacDonald in Florida, Dashiell Hammett in San Francisco, Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles, Loren Estleman in Detroit.  In Don't Look for Me detective Amos Walker looks for a missing wife, as he encounters Mossad agents, drug dealers, porno actresses and all the rich and poor of Detroit.  His ventures into lesbian bars and motorcar museums eventually lead him to his nemesis, the international drug dealer Charlotte Sing.  Walker also has a love affair with a woman named Smoke, whom he meets during his investigation, and both the love affair and the investigation end unhappily.  It is difficult these days to write a detective novel without irony but Estleman keeps the irony and self-consciousness to a minimum, with one foot in the present and one in the past.