Garbage Collector Books in Order

The Garbage Collector is one of Ames's most hardboiled creations. He is a Detroit-area private investigator, bounty hunter, and hired gun known only by the job-title nickname, which tells you a lot about how he moves through the world. He is the guy people call when a problem needs solving and nobody cares much about neat methods.

That gives the series a rough, stripped-down energy. The cases are built around retrieval jobs, missing people, old connections, and bodies that refuse to stay buried. In The Garbage Collector he is sent after a missing law-firm partner. In Bullet River a dead woman from his past turns the case personal. School Girl and Shotgun Suite keep pushing the same promise: once he is on a trail, somebody is going to get hurt.

These books sit close to noir. The hero is not clean, the jobs are never clean, and the justice on offer usually has sharp edges. If your favorite Ames stories are the meaner, faster ones, with a lead who is more weapon than therapist, the Garbage Collector line is probably your speed.