Bøger af John Lutz

A KILLER OF MANY PERSONALITIESMartin Karpp was Alan Hobson, a compulsive thief. He was Willy Bennet, a flagrant homosexual. He was Jay Jefferson, a fanatic right-winger. He was Paul Liggett who hid his true nature behind a mask of mystery. Martin Karpp was in the nation's top maximum security prison, convicted of assassinating a Presidential candidate. That should have been the last the world would ever have to fear from this madman and his many personalities.It wasn't possible that one of them could escape both the prison and Martin Karpp's own body to roam free and kill again!But try telling that to the men and women being stalked by-THE SHADOW MAN.NO PRISON CAN HOLD HIM.NO DEFENSES CAN STOP HIM.HE IS THE ULTIMATE ASSASSIN, SIX KILLERS IN ONE!

"IMAGINE IT AS BAD AS YOU CAN, SIR... AND THEN IMAGINE IT WORSE!"What was once New York's proudest skyscraper is now a heap of ruins, littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying. Beyond it, like firecrackers on a string, the rest of the targets wait to be ignited, unless the demands of the Jericho Man are met.The city hesitates. One second too long.And the walls come tumbling down.

Wilson Capp is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession.While the others involved in the notorious Gateway scandal that toppled a President told all and made their fortunes, Wilson Capp kept the faith, kept his silence... and was rewarded with prison.Now Wilson Capp is free. And he's out to make his former associates pay the ultimate price for their betrayal. Each victim crossed off his list brings him one corpse closer to his final target...The supreme master of dirty tricks himself... The ex-President of the United States!Praise for John Lutz"CHILLING!"-Macon Telegraph News

Helen Crane, a beauty "men build dreams around," hires private eye Alo Nudger to find out what's troubling her lover Jake Dancer. Middle-aging, old-shoe Nudger tails Dancer and manages to save him from a couple of strong-arm men. Dancer, handsome, feckless, an alcoholic and compulsive gambler is vague about the money he owes, and Nudger learns that Helen, working for an "escort service," plans to move "up" to prostitution to help pay Dancer's debts. Then Dancer vanishes, Nudger's lover Claudia is abducted, and the story ends with the uncovering of a grisly, sadistic snuff-film operation."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..".[Lutz] deserves high marks for another intriguing glimpse into the unusual world of Alo Nudger, a uniquely warm and thoroughly disheveled detective."-Booklist

No one thought Curtis Colt had been railroaded for the shooting of a liquor store owner, least of all St. Louis private investigator Alo Nudger. It had been an open-and-shut case of cold blooded murder, and the people of Missouri were just waiting for Colt to be strapped into the electric chair-after all, three eyewitnesses couldn't be wrong. But as time runs out on the convicted killer, Nudger receives a call from Candy Ann Adams, Colt's fiancé, who insists he's innocent, because she knows who really pulled the trigger. Despite his better judgment, Nudger takes the case, finding the trail cold and witnesses colder still. But, just as he prepares to abandon the case and leave Colt to his fate, Nudger comes across new evidence that convinces him that maybe Candy Ann is right, maybe the wrong man has been sentenced to 'ride the lightning'... A novel based on his Edgar Award-winning story. By the author of Single White Female.

New Orleans is off Alo Nudger's beaten path; the St. Louis private detective likes the comforts of home. But he also loves jazz and when he's given a round-trip ticket to the Crescent City by legendary clarinetist Fat Jack McGee, who needs to talk to him, Nudger is willing to take a flyer. Fat Jack has a problem, maybe two: a singer named Ineida, whose father is a very important man in New Orleans, and a pianist named Hollister. Hollister plays the blues just fine, but there's something about him that disturbs Fat Jack. In fact, now that Hollister and the girl are an item, Fat Jack's scared. It doesn't take long before Nudger is, too...

A murderer is stalking the streets of St Louis, and the only thing linking his victims is a system of special nightlines used by the phone company to test equipment. Lonely people use them to make contact with one another-but these people are dying.Praise for John Lutz"One of the best and most unusual novels in the history of private eye fiction."-Cedar-Rapids Gazette. Lutz's bestselling novel SWF Seeks Same was released as the major motion picture, Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda."Edgar-winner Lutz (Nightlines, Ride the Lightning) will probably not win new readers here. Readers may object to the slow pace, to Dancer's tiresome little-boy-lost routine and to a pat, if tangled, resolution. Nudger's preoccupation with buying a used car is stressed as much as his concern for Claudia, and, except for the Mississippi River as a dumping place for corpses, we don't get much St. Louis color."-Publishers Weekly

Kidnap proves only the prelude to a diabolically clever scheme of fraud and murder in this vivid tale of taut suspense.Private investigator Alo Nudger didn't have to think twice about accepting the $2,500 fee from Gordon Clark, whose seven-year-old daughter had been "kidnapped" by his ex-wife, Joan. After all, the pay was good, and the job seemed simple enough: bring young Melissa back from Florida to her frantic father. Nudger arrives at his destination to find only an empty house but soon locates Melissa in the safekeeping of a neighbor and reckons his job is done... or is it?For now Joan is missing, and the man she and Melissa had been living with is murdered. Nudger's new proposition from an equally distraught parent-Joan's father-is not so readily appealing as before. Fifty thousand dollars to locate a missing person is a tempting sum, indeed-assuming Alo Nudger can stay alive long enough to enjoy it."One of the best and most unusual novels in the history of private eye fiction." -Cedar-Rapids Gazette. Lutz's bestselling novel SWF Seeks Same was released as the major motion picture, Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda.About the SeriesSt. Louis private eye ALO NUDGER is perhaps the most Chaplinesque of fictional gumshoes. Where other P.I.s are hardcases living on cigarettes, booze, broads and danger, Alo survives (just) on antacid tablets (it was his nervous stomach that forced Alo to resign from the police force) and grocery coupons.

Private Investigator Alo Nudger is hired by an attorney to learn about the client he is defending on a murder charge. The defendant's wife has disappeared and the police believe that her wealthy husband killed her. But despite his guilt, the husband seems strangely unconcerned. The defendant's sister knows something and so does the sensuous next-door neighbor. What Nudger learns pulls him deep into a tangle of deception, sex and dark family secrets...

Edgar Award-winning author John Lutz returns with his newest Alo Nudger mystery-Thicker Than Blood. When shy, country girl-woman Norva Beane hires Nudger to investigate a possible securities fraud, he thinks it will be a routine case. He doesn't realize it will involve a wandering daughter, drug dealers, a dangerous, tattooed muscle-man, a dysfunctional family, and a poignant past that refuses to release its grip on anyone involved.Nudger, his lady love Claudia Bettencourt, and his friends Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith and Danny Evers are all touched by a tragedy that continues to unfold in surprising directions no matter how hard Nudger tries to stop it. The suspense becomes riveting as trouble builds and answers lead to more questions and more danger.In Thicker Than Blood, the nervous, antacid-chewing detective finds himself embroiled in his most perilous and fascinating case, and one that his readers aren't likely to forget.

PI Alo Nudger, at the St Louis airport to pick up a pal, offers his business card to a distraught woman just before an incoming plane blows apart. The next morning she arrives at his office with a wild story about a bomb in an attache case and a fortune in stolen diamonds, and Nudger gets involved because he needs the fee to fend off his greedy, vindictive ex-wife and her sleazy lawyer. Then his new client is tortured and murdered, and when the hard-nosed killers threaten Nudger's lover and let Nudger know that they are watching his every move, Nudger's friend and former partner, police detective Jack Hammersmith, offers information and protection.The series has garnered its 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.

Private investigator Alo Nudger of St. Louis beguiles the reader again in another of Lutz's droll, deftly-plotted mysteries. Timid Nudger, determined to be a mensch, gives new meaning to fighting city hall on an assignment from Adelaide Lacy. Her sister Mary and Mary's boss, Virgil Hiller, are missing from their government posts, along with $500,000 in public funds. According to Adelaide, Mary and Virgil despised each other so much, they would only be found together outside the office if they were dead. Which is how Nudger believes he and Adelaide could wind up, as he picks up slim clues and dodges the armed stalker hired to mark the case closed.

"You're strutting along, maybe even enjoying tempting fate, and then oops! you slip on a banana peel." -Alo NudgerIt 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.

"LUTZ OFFERS UP A HEART-POUNDING ROLLER COASTER OF A TALE." -Jeffery Deaver ROGUE WARS With the U.S. seemingly linked to a terrorist bombing in a Baltic nation and a Russian troop buildup just over the border, the covert Gray Outfit sends Thomas Laker to untangle the mess. But after a second attack leaves him out in the cold, Laker's on his own. Five thousand miles away in Miami, Laker's partner and NSA codebreaker Ava North is investigating the murder of a fellow agent. When tracks lead to a Cuban-American billionaire in bed with the Jersey Mob, Ava's superiors want her to lay off. Not a chance. Though oceans apart, Laker and Ava discover their separate missions are tied to one explosive plot. The only way out is to breach all protocol and play by their own rules . . . JOHN LUTZ IS . . . "A MAJOR TALENT." -John Lescroart "AMONG THE BEST." -San Diego Union "IN RARE FORM."-New York Times Book Review Includes the bonus short story "Paranoid Enough for Two," finalist for the Edgar Award!

ON THE TRAIL OF A BLOODY KILLER...Frank Quinn is sure he is hunting for a madman: someone who is shooting young women in the heart, defiling their bodies, leaving only the torsos to be found. Quinn, a former NYPD detective, is called into the case by an ambitious chief of police and mobilizes his team of brilliant law-enforcement misfits. But in the concrete canyons of New York, this shocking serial murder case is turning into something very different. . .A COP AND A VICTIM FIGHT BACK...Jill Clark came to the city with too many hopes and too little cash. Now a seemingly deranged woman is telling her an extraordinary story. New to an exclusive dating service, Jill is warned that other women have died on their dates-and that she could be next. Struggling against a death trap closing in around her, Jill has a powerful ally in Frank Quinn. But no one knows the true motives behind a rampage of cold-blooded murder-or how much more terrifying this is going to get. . .

An invitation written in blood...A madman is stalking women in the city. By the time his victims are found, they've been dismembered with careful precision, their limbs stacked into a gruesome pyramid and completely cleansed of every last drop of blood.Accustomed to working on the most grisly homicides, detective Frank Quinn's nerves don't rattle easily but with this killer the veteran cop feels a chill run down his spine.This time, he realises, he is up against a psychopath who will test him like never before...Praise for John Lutz:'Lutz offers up a heart pounding roller coaster of a ride.' Jeffrey Deaver.'Misleading clues and dramatic suspense will keep readers pondering the intricacies of this twisted, creepy whodunit long after the last page is turned' Publishers Weekly, starred review.

This award-winning work explores Aboriginal people's displacement from the new economy from the arrival of the first Europeans to the 1970s.

Signed, sealed and delivered...A former homicide detective specialising in tracking serial killers, Frank Quinn is a highly decorated ex-cop. And now his niece, Carlie Hobbs, needs help. Someone is stalking her, and the NYPC can't stop him. A blonde, blue eyed beauty, Carlie fits the victim profile of the killer who's been terrorising women - leaving them bound, gagged and tortured with surgical precision. To win against the most personal adversary of his career Quinn will have to set the perfect trap... and all he needs now is the perfect bait.Praise for John Lutz:'Lutz knows how to make you shiver.' Harlan Coban.'Lutz offers up a heart pounding roller coaster of a ride.' Jeffrey Deaver.

To catch a killer... or die tryingA murderer dubbed 'The Night Prowler' has turned the city that doesn't sleep into a town kept awake by terror. Unseen, he enters couples' home. Unsuspected, he lingers until the perfect moment arrives. And then he leaves 'gifts' for his victims - before taking their lives.Ex-homicide cop Frank Quinn is still reeling in the wake of an elaborate set-up that ended his career. For Quinn, tracking this killer isn't just any job - it's a last chance to salvage his reputation. And with the body count rising, it's up to Quinn to unlock the mystery of a madman's past and end his bloody reign.

The unforgettable novel that inspired the classic film.After a messy breakup, Allie Jones finds herself living alone in her New York apartment with no one to share her bed with - and more urgently, no one to share her rent. The solution is obvious - so she advertises for a roommate. And Hendra Carlson seems perfect - shy, quiet... safe. But soon Hendra's disturbing envy of Allie's looks and social life becomes unsettling. She wears Allie's clothes, even buys a wig in Allie's colour and style.And then the obscene phone calls start. Allie's credit cards vanish, and she discovers Hendra is leading a dangerous double life. For Hendra's twisted admiration has no limits, the nightmare has just begun, and there will be a bloody price to pay...Praise for John Lutz:'Lutz offers up a heart pounding roller coaster of a ride' Jeffrey Deaver.'Misleading clues and dramatic suspense will keep readers pondering the intricacies of this twisted, creepy whodunit long after the last page is turned' Publishers Weekly, starred review.'Lutz knows how to make you shiver' Harlan Coben.

The infamous transsexual serial killer known as Daniel Danielle escapes from prison during a Florida hurricane and Frank Quinn fears he has returned and is wreaking havoc as the body count rises. Or it could be a copy cat killer working with stunning originality but whoever it is, this evil force must be stopped before another victim is claimed.

A New York restaurateur, Millie Graff, is followed home from work by a man who forces her into her apartment and tortures her before killing her. She is found with her hand wrapped around a silver cross on a necklace. She's been gagged, sexually violated and then skinned alive.As Quinn and his associates follow the path of the killer known as 'The Skinner', another woman's desperate search for the truth will bring her into the crosshairs of a killer with a burning desire to settle old scores. Quinn and Pearl must rush to Missouri to confront the monster before yet another life is lost.Praise for John Lutz:Lutz has produced another procedural masterpiece. BooklistA page-turner to the nail-biting end, the fifth Frank Quinn investigation will leave readers breathless... Misleading clues and dramatic suspense will keep readers pondering the intricacies of this twisty, creepy whodunit long after the last page is turned. Publisher's Weekly starred review.