I’ve read a couple dozen books by Loren D. Estleman–both mysteries and Westerns–and enjoyed them all. Steve Lewis’s blog post about a down on his luck private eye, Ralph Poteet (you can read Steve’s post here), triggered my searching for Estleman’s Peeper and the two anthologies with Ralph Poteet stories in my cavernous basement.

Peeper is a 1989 loopy detective novel, featuring an overweight Detroit PI named Ralph Poteet who has a drinking problem (among other personal problems). When the hooker in the apartment above his calls Ralph in the middle of the night and offers him a $100 to help her, Ralph reluctantly agrees (since he’s broke).

Ralph finds a monsignor dead in the hooker’s bed. That leads to Ralph getting entangled in a conspiracy involving church corruption, Vatican politics, and murder. The hooker gets caught in an explosion as someone bombs her apartment. She survives, but is gravely injured.

Estleman uses Peeper to satirize the detective genre as the reader follows Ralph as he gets sucked into blackmail attempts and assassination attempts which leads to a conspiracy that reaches both Washington D.C. and the Vatican. 

Ralph Poteet shows up in short story form in two anthologies. The first is An Eye For Justice: The Third Private Eye Writers of America Anthology Edited by Robert J. Randisi (1988)–you can read my review here). “State of Grace” is basically the first couple chapters of Peeper.

The final Ralph Poteet story shows up in Flesh & Blood: Guilty As Sin Edited by Max Allan Collins and Jeff Gelb (2003). “A Hatful of Ralph,” where Ralph Poteet, as a result of his many problems, is reduced to playing Santa in a department store where he’s supposed to find out who is stealing plenty of items. Of course, on top of the thefts, there’s a murder to spice things up.

If you’re in the mood for some sardonic private eye stories with a noirish twist–a change of pace from traditional P.I fiction–I recommend Loren D. Estleman’s Ralph Poteet series. GRADE: B