From Publishers WeeklyNoir is a fitting descriptive for Edgar-winning Lutz's latest Fred Carver mystery (after Hot ), even though the middle-aged PI with a bum knee plies his trade on the sun-drenched west coast of Florida. After retiree Jerome Evans dies unexpectedly, apparently from a heart attack, his flinty widow, Hattie, receives a note suggesting that her husband was murdered, and hires Carver to investigate. While poking around the total-care retirement village of Solartown, Carver learns that Hattie's next-door neighbor is smitten with her, that the deceased had been fooling around with the widow Crane and that Jerome's coronary was verified by the village's medical center. After finding Maude Crane's body, apparently a suicide, the PI is warned off the case with a vicious beating from a steroid-using, alcoholic sadist named Adam Beed. Wary but undeterred, Carver uncovers connections that link Beed, the medical center and a drug company, grasping the details of their chilling experiment only when he and Hattie are in Beed's nasty clutches. Although the ending is a bit abrupt, the story is highly satisfying, powered mainly by the bleak, consistent outlook of its hero, who observes that if he changed his occupation, "he'd miss the job but not the people." Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

JOHN LUTZ IS . . . "A MAJOR TALENT." —John Lescroart "AMONG THE BEST." —San Diego Union "IN RARE FORM." —The New York Times Book Review THE UNKNOWN SPY Officially, Thomas Laker is an employee of the NSA. His real employer, known as the Gray Outfit, is not listed—anywhere. When a Washington, D.C., insider is killed in a bomb explosion, Laker teams up with cryptographer Ava North on a desperate search for clues. The only thing certain is that another act of terrorism is imminent. Delving into the dangerous past when America was drawn into global conflict, they discover one of history's greatest—and deadliest—secrets. In the wrong hands it can unleash unimaginable destruction. Now, to keep his homeland from plunging into its darkest hour, Laker will have to defend everything he believes in . . . "LUTZ OFFERS UP A HEART-POUNDING ROLLER COASTER OF A...

A collection of twenty-seven short mystery/thriller stories with an introduction by John Lutz, author of Better Mousetraps, Endless Roads, Shadows Everywhere, and The Nudger Dilemmas.

From Publishers WeeklyHeat-seeking Florida PI Fred Carver (Burn, Torch, Spark, etc.) tackles the highly flammable abortion issue in his searing 10th outing. Carver's live-in lover, Beth Jackson, who is black, discovers that she is pregnant and, after much thought, decides that she will proceed with the pregnancy. When she stops by the Women's Light Clinic to cancel her appointment, she passes through a gauntlet of anti-abortion protesters from Operation Alive. An explosion rips the clinic just after she enters-killing a doctor and a patient and injuring Beth, who loses her baby. Investigations by the FBI and the local police, headed by William McGregor (surely one of the most unsavory police officers in the genre) result in an early arrest of a young and fanatical member of Operation Alive. On his own, Carver investigates Operation Alive's leader, Rev. Martin Freel of the Church of the Clear Connection, and talks with the widow of the slain doctor, with a surviving physician determined to carry on the clinic's work and with other witnesses and suspects. Another bomb explodes at another clinic, and a sadistic, Bible-spouting killer surfaces. Behind the intransigent and hackneyed rhetoric of both sides, Carver finds venality aplenty as he and Beth attempt to come to terms with their loss. Veteran novelist Lutz ties some nifty twists into his plot, which moves quickly towards a final deadly confrontation. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistThis time out, crime strikes very close to private detective Fred Carver's home. His significant other, journalist Beth Jackson, is pregnant with their child. Carver is delighted when she changes her mind about having an abortion--until she goes to the clinic to cancel her appointment. As she enters, a bomb explodes, killing two clinic workers. Beth loses the baby. Local police and the FBI very quickly arrest a likely suspect, but driven by loss and anger, Carver begins to investigate other possibilities. His primary target is Operation Alive, a militant church-based group of anti-abortion demonstrators, but as he pursues his case, events point Carver toward a different motive for the bombing. Lutz is a reliable creator of mysteries, and Carver, a middle-aged former cop who has been pensioned after losing the use of one leg to the gun of a teenaged convenience-store robber, is an engaging hero. Here Carver's almost inchoate ruminations about the fanaticism of anti-abortion zealots are especially well done, and fans of the balding, disabled detective won't be disappointed. Thomas Gaughan

From Publishers WeeklyLutz's Florida-based crime capers, most recently Spark and Hot , feature PI Fred Carver. Tense and relentless tales, they are essentially linear stories in which the reader is drawn along in the wake of brutal and seemingly unrelated events. Lutz highlights his series' hallmarks: Carver has a bullet-damaged bum knee, a powerful upper body, a black journalist girlfriend named Beth, an urbane Latino cop pal named Desoto and an alarmingly redneck cop enemy named McGregor. His cases tend to explode dramatically, often moments after he's been hired. No exception here. Young wife and mother Donna Winship throws herself in front of a truck minutes after handing Carver a check and asking him to follow her. She told him she was unhappily married, guiltily having an affair and worried about her husband's finding out. The day after her death, her husband Mark shoots himself. He was also less than faithful. Donna's lover has two names and works as a male model and occasional paid escort. Mark's lover also models once in a while. A coincidence? Hardly, since both extramarital interests moonlight for the same agency. Motivated by a sense of responsibility, curiosity and Donna's check, Carver continues to investigate and is soon joined by Beth, who is working on the story. Another death knocks down a third side of a "love square." Lutz's blunt character sketches and gradually connected events are subtly effective. His dogged Carver is a believably heroic guy, tough, scarred and able to exhibit fear and courage at the same time. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIn the Florida of crime fiction, only the thinnest of lines separates the everyday civilized world from a subterranean sickness oozing near the surface like sewage in an untended sinkhole. The function of the Florida private eye is to stand guard between these worlds, a hard-boiled catcher in the rye keeping as many innocents as possible from slipping into the slime. Lutz's Fred Carver performs that function as well as anyone since Travis McGee, and Carver's Florida is way more bent than McGee's ever was. In his eighth adventure, the somewhat mellowed Carver--thank his no-nonsense lover, black journalist Beth, for that--takes on the peculiar case of a married woman who wants him to follow her and her lover. Soon the woman, her husband, and her lover are all dead, and Carver is losing the battle of the slime three to zip. That's not the final score, of course, but even when Carver wins a few, there's always a sense of loss, of order giving a bit more ground to chaos. Call it a moral defeat: Florida is full of them, and Lutz makes us feel their sting. Bill Ott