"You're strutting along, maybe even enjoying tempting fate, and then oops! you slip on a banana peel." -Alo Nudger
It is impossible not to respond warmly and with affection to John Lutz's rather hapless private investigator, Alo Nudger. In this, his tenth attempt to make order in the chaos of the world around him, he is coerced by a very young, fearless, feckless pixie of a colleague named Lacy Tumulty to take over a case that she's too busy to handle. It's an easy assignment, but Nudger's agreement to help with the case is a reluctant one. Lacy, charming as she is, has a way of being followed by trouble.
The client is a man who wants to prove his daughter was murdered. The police won't do it, so he has hired Lacy, who enlists Nudger. The daughter, alone in her locked house, tripped on the stairs, fell, fractured her skull, and died. Seems to Nudger it's almost robbery to take the man's money.
But all is not what it seems. Lacy is beaten by an unknown assailant and devilishly crippled by the severing of an Achilles tendon. Even the delightful Claudia Bettencourt, to whom Nudger is "not married, but attached," becomes imperiled. But however much trouble this new adventure causes for Nudger and his friends, Lutz sees to it, as he has in his hero's previous escapades, that we readers profit mightily from the enjoyment this likable detective brings us.
Author Biography:
John Lutz's work includes political suspense, private eye novels, urban suspense, humor, occult, crime caper, police procedural, espionage, historical, futuristic, amateur detective, thriller; virtually every mystery sub-genre. He is the author of more than forty novels and over 200 short stories and articles. His novels and short fiction have been translated into almost every language and adapted for almost every medium. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, the Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of two private eye series, the Alo Nudger series, set in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as many non-series novels. The two series have garnered their share of awards. Both What You Don't Know Can Hurt You won a Shamus for Best Private Eye Short Story and Ride the Lightning nabbed an Edgar for Best Short Story in 1985. His novel SWF SEEKS SAME was made into the hit movie SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and his novel THE EX was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay. When Lutz isn't writing, he's reading, following baseball, dining out with friends, or going to movies or plays. Lutz and his wife, Barbara, split their time between St. Louis and Sarasota, Florida. His latest book is the suspense novel Mister X. Praise for John Lutz "Lutz's plotting here has a stark, unusual, genuinely disturbing curve to it-making this another Nudgeresque blend of strong action, lean atmosphere, and downbeat personality." -Kirkus (Dancer's Debt) ..".[Lutz] deserves high marks for another intriguing glimpse into the unusual world of Alo Nudger, a uniquely warm and thoroughly disheveled detective." -Booklist (Dancer's Debt) "Lutz's economy of language and well-timed suspense work very well in this tale... A taut mystery recommended for all active collections." -Booklist (Ride the Lightning) "Lutz does an excellent job here... keeping the story complicated and varied but never losing the reader in red herrings or distracting minutiae." -Publishers Weekly (Nightlines)
