Kill Zone by Loren D. Estleman is the first in his Peter Macklin series and was first published in 1984, which yes makes it problematic at times, but as someone who grew up in Michigan, man this book was a giant needle of nostalgia injected straight into my eyeballs.
A rag-tag group of eight would-be terrorists who call themselves Siegfried hijack a Boblo boat (!!) soon after it leaves the dock in Detroit. On board is a government bureaucrat's daughter, which leads the FBI to go local Detroit mobster, Michael Boniface, now cooling his heels in prison. In exchange for leniency, Boniface puts his best guy on the job, mob enforcer and hitman, Peter Macklin. What Macklin doesn't know is that the guy running the show while Boniface is behind bars doesn't want to give up his seat and the killer now has his own hitman tracking his every move.

Detroit in the 1980s, crooked cops, the FBI sniffing around, the mob and BOBLO BOATS! It scratched a very strong regional flavor itch for me even though it doesn't hit nearly the same as Estleman's Amos Walker series.

Here's the thing, there's eleventy billion characters in this book. Eight terrorists, the Boblo boat workers, the passengers, mobsters, Macklin's dysfunctional family, his mistress, his Old School Italian mentor, FBI agents, cops - I just gave up after a while keeping track of who was who and started looking at this story with a cinematic eye. Back in the day Charles Bronson would have starred in this. These days, they'd rewrite it for a world-weary Ben Affleck.

It's all a bit absurd and features all the trigger warnings a book published in 1984 would (stereotypes, some racial slurs, the female characters in Macklin's immediate orbit are....well, not great) but books like this scratch a very particular itch of mine, and on that score it kept me amused. Not sure if I'll continue on with the series because honestly? Amos Walker is where it's at for me.

Final Grade = C+