John Lutz

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  • Bibliography:
    75 Books (5 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1966
  • Latest Book:
    September 2022
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Full Series List in Order

An Alo Nudger Mystery

1 - Buyer Beware (Oct-1976)
2 - Nightlines (Jan-1985)
3 - The Right to Sing the Blues (Jan-1986)
4 - Ride the Lightning (Feb-1987)
5 - Dancer's Debt (Mar-1988)
6 - Time Exposure (Jul-1989)
7 - Diamond Eyes (Dec-1990)
8 - Thicker Than Blood (Nov-1993)
9 - Death by Jury (Sep-1995)
10 - Oops! (Feb-1998)

A Frank Quinn Novel

1 - Darker Than Night (Nov-2004)
2 - In for the Kill (Nov-2007)
3 - Night Kills (Oct-2008)
4 - Urge To Kill (Oct-2009)
5 - Mister X (Oct-2010)
6 - Serial (Aug-2011)
7 - Switch (Jun-2012)
8 - Pulse (Jul-2012)
9 - Twist (Sep-2013)
9.5 - Carnage (Jul-2014)
10 - Frenzy (Oct-2014)
11 - Slaughter (Aug-2015)

A Fred Carver Mystery

1 - Someone Else (Dec-1999)
2 - Tropical Heat (Jun-1987)
3 - Scorcher (Oct-1987)
4 - Kiss (Sep-1988)
5 - Flame (Jan-1990)
6 - Bloodfire (Jan-1991)
7 - Hot (Jan-1992)
8 - Spark (Jan-1993)
9 - Torch (Mar-1994)
10 - Burn (Mar-1995)
11 - Lightning (Jul-1996)

Thomas Horn

The Night Spider (Nov-2003)
Night Victims (Sep-2009)

Thomas Laker

1 - The Honorable Traitors (Jan-2018)
2 - The Havana Game (Jan-2019)

Book List in Order: 75 titles

  • Thieves' Honor: A Novella

  • Buyer Beware

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 1

    Hired to return a kidnapped child to her father, Alo Nudger discovers that he's been set up for fraud--and possibly murder. "One of the best and most unusual novels in the history of private eye fiction....

  • Lazarus Man

    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...

  • Bonegrinder

    For the parents of the torn form that had been a boy, it was a tragedy. For the merchants in this sleepy Ozark resort, it was a gold mine. But for the sheriff who had to deal with the army of thrill-seekers drawn by the "Bonegrinder" terror, it was w...

  • Jericho Man

    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 ...

  • The Shadow Man

    A KILLER OF MANY PERSONALITIES Martin 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 Ka...

  • Nightlines

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 2

    A murderer is stalking the streets of St. Louis and the only connection between his victims are the nightlines, special phone lines used by the phone company to test equipment. At night, lonely people use them to make contact with each other: to talk...

  • The Right to Sing the Blues

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 3

    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...

  • Ride the Lightning

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 4

    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 fo...



  • Tropical Heat

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 2

    Welcome to Miami. Keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your gun. It was what you might call a lucky shot. A single bullet ended Carver's day as a cop and began his career as a P.I. When a dark-haired beauty needs help finding a missing lover...

  • Scorcher

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 3

    Someone is going around Orlando, Florida incinerating people with a homemade flame thrower. Drawn into the affair by personal tragedy, Carver, ex-cop turned private eye, begins checking into the killings and soon learns that all evidence points to Pa...

  • Better Mousetraps

    Thirty-five short stories by Edgar-winning novelist Lutz are reprinted here, following a perceptive introduction by Nevins. Reflecting the ingenious plotting and characterizations in Tropical Heat, Nightlines and the author's other full-length advent...

  • Dancer's Debt

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 5

    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, f...

  • Kiss

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 4

    Florida: a paradise for elderly pensioners seeking the warm kiss of the southern sun. But certain aging residents of the Sunhaven Retirement Home have recently been kissed by grim misfortune. Held captive by confusion, repression, and terror, they'...

  • Shadowtown

    New York policeman E.L. Oxman is investigating the death of an ex-cop working as security guard on the set of Shadowtown, a popular soap opera. The only man at the scene claims that the murderer was-a vampire. The pressure of finding the black-caped ...

  • The Truth of the Matter

    Lou Roebuck's trouble began with a little lie, that's all it was, but it had made him a hunted man. The lie led to his being fired from his job, then came the final fight with his wife, his wild impulse to run down that slob Ingrahm when he stepped o...

  • Time Exposure

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 6

    Private investigator Alo Nudger of St. Louis beguiles the reader again in the fifth 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 s...

  • Flame

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 5

    The frightened old man in Carver's office said he was Bert Renway -- a Florida pensioner hired to impersonate wealthy meat magnate Frank Wesley. Moments later, he was nobody -- just a charred corpse blown to unrecognizable bit The cops claimed the vi...

  • Old Saying

    in Dick Tracy: The Secret Files

    CRIMESTOPPERS' CASEBOOK: 1944 -- Everyone knew the beautiful Hollywood starlet's death was suicide. Everyone but a hack screen- writer -- and DICK TRACY... 1955 -- A new music called rock'n'roll is sweeping the country -- but someone wants one...



  • Swf Seeks Same

    No matter how much you think you know, you're still taking a chance when you shop for a new roommate. But after Allie Jones throws out Sam, her sexy but two-timing live-in lover, she desperately needs someone to split the rent on her Upper West Side,...

  • Diamond Eyes

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 7

    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 for...

  • Bloodfire

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 6

    At first Fred Carver agrees to help distraught Bob Ghostly find his missing, heroin-addicted wife, Elizabeth. But all it takes is a corpse, a narrowly dodged bullet, and the discovery that his client is Florida's most notorious drug dealer for the cr...

  • Hot

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 7

    In this latest Fred Carver mystery, Lutz ( Kiss ; Tropical Heat ) sets his aging knight errant from Orlando, Fla., against younger villains on the nowhere fringes of the Florida Keys. Crusty old Henry Tiller--an ex-cop from Milwaukee living on tiny K...

  • Dancing With the Dead

    St. Louis realtor Mary Arlington, whose mother is alcoholic and whose lover is physically abusive, lives for her mambo, cha-cha and tango lessons with Mel Holt at the Romance Studio. After kicking her lover out of her life and checking her mother int...

  • Spark

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 8

    In John Lutz's seventh mystery of this acclaimed series, disabled Florida P.I. Fred Carver is hired by the redoubtable Hattie Evans to investigate the death of her seventy-year-old husband, Jerome. Although the doctors say he had a heart attack, an a...

  • Thicker Than Blood

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 8

    When shy, country girl-woman Norva Beane hires Alo 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 muscleman, a dysfu...

  • Torch

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 9

    Disabled Florida P.I. Fred Carver takes on a strange case: a married woman wants him to follow her--and her lover. After the woman commits suicide, Carver stays on the case. And when her husband also kills himself and the lover disappears, Carver kno...

  • Hard Boiled

    Sit back and spend some time with some of North America’s favorite mystery writers. Their heroes have caught more criminals â€" and imaginations â€" than any other gumshoes in recent American fiction. John Lutz has twice won the Private Eye Writers...

  • Plague: A Novella

    A Short Story by John LutzExcerpt1901, Fredricksburg, KansasCount Alronza Matraque Mearitoir, alias Billy the Idiot, pounded his gavel on the table and called the meeting to order."We have," he said, "a situation that has reached the proportions of a...



  • Shell Game: A Novella

    A Short Story by John LutzExcerptThe lowering sun was like a red eye peering over the pine trees on Gray Mountain, into the quiet band room. Hans Jorgan had been the music teacher and band director at Allville High School for ten years. He was forty-...

  • But Once A Year

    in Cat Crimes for the Holidays

    CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS WITH FAMILY AND FELINES

    In these nineteen original tail-twitching tales of mystery, cats from Maine coon to Scottish fold, tabby to Siamese, white Persian to calico crack all manner of holiday capers. Arbor Day reminds a...

  • Burn

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 10

    The ninth mystery in this acclaimed series finds disabled Florida P.I. Fred Carver in his most obscure case yet. Carver winds up in the middle of a deadly game of cat and mouse, when his client, who's accused of stalking a woman he says he's never me...

  • Death by Jury

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 9

    Private investigator Nudger is hired by an eccentric attorney to learn about the client he is defending on a murder charge. The defendant's wife has disappeared. The police and prosecution say she is dead and that her wealthy-banker husband killed he...

  • The Ex

    David and Molly Jones, urban professionals, live happily with their toddler son Michael on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Then Diedre Grocci moves into their apartment building. She's David's moody ex-wife, and she wants him back. Slowly, Diedre lure...

  • Lightning

    A Fred Carver Mystery - 11

    When Florida PI Fred Carver and his lover, Beth, decide to keep their unborn child, Beth insists she stop by the abortion clinic in person to cancel her appointment. While Beth runs inside, Carver waits across the street in the car, watching pro-life...

  • Before You Leap

    Nudge looked 30 floors down at the hole in the net, winced and wondered why the stranger blamed him for everything. Then he started digging and uncovered one nasty scam in "Before You Leap". And in "Ride the Lightning", Nudge has to prove the gas sta...

  • Oops!

    An Alo Nudger Mystery - 10

    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...

  • Until You Are Dead

    A collection of twenty-seven short mystery/thriller stories with an introduction by John Lutz. The stories included in the collection:Until You Are DeadThe Chess PlayersExplosive CargoGames for AdultsThe Basement RoomDouble MurderFair ShakeHeatLife ...

  • Political Decision

    in First Lady Murders

    Nineteen of today's finest mystery writers--including Anne Perry, P. M. Carlson, John Lutz, Judith Kelman, Gillian Roberts, and Sarah Shankman--offer an entertaining selection of original mystery stories centered around America's First Ladies. Origin...



  • Someone Else

    in First Cases Volume 3
    A Fred Carver Mystery - 1

    Follow Tony Hillerman's Jim Chee as he investigates rumors of witchcraft in the steamy Southwest. Join Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan when she looks into a suspicious house fire in Baltimore. Compare the detecting tactics of Maxine O'Callaghan's pione...

  • The Nudger Dilemmas

    Alo Nudger, the St. Louis ex-cop whose office is just upstairs from Danny's Donuts, is both the most normal of all fictional private eyes and the most surprising. He's got an uncertain stomach he doses with nonstop antacids; he doesn't like guns or v...

  • Typographical Error: A Novella

  • The Night Caller

    Young, Beautiful … And Dead When he stumbles across his only daughter’s corpse in a deserted beachfront bungalow, devastated Ezekiel Cooper vows to find her murderer. What the formerNYPD detective doesn’t know is that there have been other vic...

  • The Night Watcher

    Someone is killing wealthy Manhattanites. One by one, the victims are discovered in luxurious high-rise apartments. Bound, gagged - brutally murdered in the 'safety' of their own homes, by someone whose modus operandi is as horrifying as ...

  • Endless Road and Other Stories

    Lou Roebuck, in "The Truth of the Matter," seemingly has it all: cushy, high-paying advertising job, beautiful trophy wife, and stellar war record. But it's all a house of cards. Roebuck is a pathological liar. The war record is a lie, the job histor...

  • The Night Spider

    Thomas Horn

    ALL WRAPPED UP AND READY TO DIE Each woman slept in her Manhattan high-rise, behind securely locked doors. Each was sealed alive in her bedsheets and stabbed repeatedly. Each bled to a slow end. Mouths frozen in silent screams tell little to retir...

  • Darker Than Night

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 1

    A killer dubbed "The Night Prowler" has turned the city that doesn't sleep into a town kept awake by terror. Unseen, he enters couples' homes. Unsuspected, he lingers until the perfect moment arrives. He leaves "gifts" for his victims--before taking ...

  • Arful

    in Show Business Is Murder

    Lights...Camera...Murder! Behind the velvet ropes and closed curtains, buried in the back lots, you'll find the darker side of the spotlight. It's where stars are created overnight, and burn out just cis quickly. Where deals are made to be broken,...

  • Fear the Night

    A MADMAN'S OBSESSION IS A CITY'S NIGHTMARE He comes out when the sun goes down. He delivers death from the barrel of a rifle. He's made New York City his shooting gallery. Men and women, natives and tourists, young and old, have all been his victi...



  • Chill of Night

    The Justice Killer There's a twisted serial killer stalking the streets of New York City, dealing his own perverse version of justice. He kills swiftly and silently, leaving his calling card--a red "J"--on the bodies of his prey. His victims have on...

  • In for the Kill

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 2

    Frank Quinn, the relentless detective who made his debut in John Lutz's acclaimed thriller... Darker Than Night, faces his toughest-and most personal-case yet... AN INVITATION WRITTEN IN BLOOD... A madman is stalking women in the city. By t...

  • Night Kills

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 3

    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, mobilizes his team of brilliant law-enforcement misfits to t...

  • Night Victims

    Thomas Horn

    Good Night, Sleep Tight A computer programmer, a casting director, a call girl. The victims have nothing in common except the manner in which they spent their last night -- wrapped in their own bed sheets in a bloody ritual of slow, agonizing deat...

  • Supplemental Short Story for Urge to Kill

  • Other Than Murder

  • Urge To Kill

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 4

    For A Killer, Once Is Never Enough Homicide detective Frank Quinn can't stay retired when a new breed of murdering madman is on the prowl. In a city terrorized by bloody brutality, Quinn and his team hunt a psychopath who lures beautiful women int...

  • Mister X

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 5

    Fear Leaves A Mark He mutilates his victims. Slices their throats. And carves an X into their flesh. Five years ago, he claimed the lives of six women. Then the killings abruptly stopped -- no one knows why. Ex-homicide detective Frank Quinn remembe...

  • Serial

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 6

    THE KILLER BECOMES THE HUNTED She was gagged. Violated. Tortured. Nailing the killer is priority number one and only the best will do -- that means Frank Quinn. And Quinn wouldn't want it any other way. Because he recognizes the victim. Years ago, a...

  • Single White Female

    After a messy break-up, Allie Jones finds herself living alone in New York City apartment, no one to share her bed with--and more urgently, no one to share her rent. The solution seems clear: she needs a roomate. And Hedra Carlson seems perfect--she'...

  • Shadows Everywhere

    Twelve tales of mystery from the pen of bestelling author John Lutz, Shadows everywhere collects much of the author's early work. You'll meet everyone from a "hardscrabble farm woman" to a volatile trucker with an explosive cargo, a cliff driver with...

  • Switch

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 7

    FIND THE CAT, CATCH THE KILLER Dead in her penthouse apartment. Designer scarf around her neck. Dismembered finger in a place it should never be. What the police haven’t found is her diamond-and-ruby bracelet, switched with a cheap imitation. A br...

  • Pulse

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 8

    Some Killers Come Back For More The killer’s depravity is insatiable. What he does to his victims is unthinkable. Homicide detective turned P.I. Frank Quinn has seen this M.O. before. A demented ritual, it’s the work of Daniel Danielle -- a no...

  • Twist

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 9

    Kill. . .Or Be Killed Frank Quinn is a decorated ex-cop. A former homicide detective specializing in tracking serial killers. Now his niece, Carlie Hobbs, needs help. Someone is stalking her, and the NYPD can't stop him. A blonde, blue-eyed beauty...

  • Carnage

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 9.5

    JOHN LUTZ IS . . . "A MAJOR TALENT." -- John Lescroart"ONE OF THE MASTERS." -- Ridley Pearson"IN RARE FORM." -- The New York Times Book Review "AMONG THE BEST." -- San Diego UnionTHE BIRTH OF A KILLING FRENZYThe killer has a pattern. Abduct a gir...

  • Kitty: A Novella

    A honeymooner's disturbing dreams are just a preview of his kittenish bride's strange powers.ExcerptWhy not love at first sight? Especially if that sight was Katherine Prim?William had never regarded himself as the sort to conduct a whirlwind courtsh...

  • The President's Cat Is Missing: A Novella

    A Short Story by John LutzExcerptThere are some people I owe money, but I'm square with the law and with my Aunt Amanda. Which is why she said it was okay if I stayed at her secluded little farmhouse outside Washington, D.C., while she spent the mont...

  • Stutter Step: A Novella

    A Short Story by John LutzExcerptEDDIE HAYES SLOWED ALMOST TO A STOP AFTER THE FOOTBALL WAS SNAPPED, THEN SPRINTED DOWN THE SIDELINES, WHIRLED AT the fifty-yard line, and there was the ball. Willard, the quarterback, had made a perfect pass, and all ...

  • Veterans: A Novella

    A Short Story by John LutzExcerptIt began because Confederate Major General Henry Heth's troops needed boots.In search of a new supply in a town called Gettysburg, Heth's men marched unknowingly toward death and history. They were noticed by Union so...

  • With Anchovies: A Novella

    A Short Story by John Lutz about an unfortunate little fish and an unfortunate allergic reaction.ExcerptThis guy, Joey Longo, laid a deluxe pizza box on the table and slipped into the booth to sit down across from Ham-ish. He drummed his thick finger...

  • Frenzy

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 10

    New York Times bestselling author John Lutz brings back his popular homicide detective Frank Quinn in a gritty, fast-paced serial killer thriller, and like Jeffery Deaver and Harlan Coben, twists an ingenious plot driven by a murderer who will stop a...

  • Slaughter

    A Frank Quinn Novel - 11

    LOVE THEM TO PIECES A beautiful jogger, drained of blood, dismembered, then meticulously reassembled on the the grass in Central Park. Subway derailments, plummeting elevators, collapsing construction cranes, apartment explosions -- all creating a...

  • The Honorable Traitors

    Thomas Laker - 1

    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 sea...

  • The Havana Game

    Thomas Laker - 2

    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 col...

  • Escape from Virtual Island

    Looking for an escape from reality? Then look no further!Escape from Virtual Island is an epic comedy adventure starring Paul Rudd, written by John Lutz of Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and 30 Rock, and produced by Broadway Video....

  • Single White Female Seeks Same

    A Manhattan woman’s new roommate is a nightmare in this classic psychological thriller that inspired the hit film, Single White Female.Things could be better for computer consultant Allie Jones. With her boyfriend moved out, she needs to find ...

Award-Winning Books by John Lutz

Kiss
1988 Shamus Award -- P.I. Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

John Lutz has published 75 books.

John Lutz does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Single White Female Seeks Same, was published in September 2022.

The first book by John Lutz, Thieves' Honor: A Novella, was published in January 1966.

Yes. John Lutz has 5 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
Author Series
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