Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Tropical Heat by John Lutz

John Lutz has been a byword in the world of crime fiction for years. He is the author of more than forty novels and over 200 short stories and articles. 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 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 Nudger series, set in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as stand-alone books. 

In the first of a 10-book series, Tropical Heat (Henry Holt, 1986), Fred Carver is introduced as a former policeman injured on the job and forced to take early retirement. He acquired a private investigator’s license and hung out his shingle in Del Moray, Florida, where he is still recovering from his wounds. His former lieutenant sends Edwina Talbot, a hotshot realtor who is searching for her lover, to him. All the evidence suggests that Willis Davis committed suicide by leaping from a cliff into the ocean. Edwina does not believe that he would leave her and, since his body has not been recovered, prefers to think he disappeared because of money problems.

Carver is reluctant to take the case – if the police think it’s suicide, it probably is -- but he needs the money and he needs to be busy. He learns that the Davis was skimming cash from client deposits at the realtor firm where he was working. Then he finds forged ID in multiple names in his apartment. Suspicions justifiably aroused, Carver doubles down on talking to Davis’s coworkers and associates, which attracts the attention of some knife-toting, drug-dealing Cubanos who expend considerable effort to discourage Carver’s research. Federal law enforcement representatives who happen to be watching the Cubanos aren’t happy to have Carver in their way. Violence begins to trail Carver wherever he goes, and Carver finds he’s in better shape to deal with it than he thought.

Well written and plotted even if the outcome is predictable. A solid start to a fine series.

·         Hardcover: 246 pages

·         Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (July 1, 1986)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0030069580

·         ISBN-13: 978-0030069581

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Spark by John Lutz

John Lutz has written almost every kind of mystery there is, with more than 50 books and dozens of short stories to his credit. The Private Eye Writers of America have given him multiple Shamus awards, one for best PI short story in 1983 and one for best PI hardcover in 1989, as well as the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. He received an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America in 1986 and has been shortlisted many times for more Edgar and Shamus awards.

He started out writing private investigator stories, first with the Alo Nudger novels set in St. Louis, and then the Fred Carver series set on the west coast of Florida, then branched out into police procedurals and other forms of the mystery. Spark (Henry Holt, 1993) is the seventh title featuring Fred Carver, a former policeman whose knee injury was his ticket to early and reluctant retirement.

When Jerome Evans, declared in perfect health two months earlier, dies suddenly of a heart attack, his widow receives an anonymous note saying the death was murder. The police decline to look into it and instead refer her to Carver. Carver is bemused by the completely self-contained retirement community that the Evans lived in. Shopping, golf, restaurants, medical care, it is all available to the residents of Solartown without leaving the premises.

Carver brings his significant other Beth Jackson, an investigative reporter, in to help research the principals behind Solartown. A little digging turns up the fact that the people who live in Solartown have a nearly 10 percent higher than average death rate. And that nearly all of the homes are purchased on a reverse mortgage plan, such that the houses revert to the owners of Solartown upon the death of the purchasers. Carver wonders if the higher than usual mortality rate and the mortgage arrangements are related. Even so, they don’t explain the anonymous note or the unexpected death of Mr. Evans.

Within a few days, Carver has a visitor that forcibly impresses upon him the need to drop the inquiry. Bruised and shaken, he presses on, only to be nearly run off the road by a runaway Winnebago soon thereafter. The degree of physical punishment Carver endures in this book is amazing.

Solid private investigator fare, definitely a little darker than some PI novels, with a nasty twist at the end. A good strong read for fans of the PI genre and for fans of mysteries set in the Florida landscape.  

·         Hardcover: 243 pages

·         Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (January 1, 1993)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0805019936

·         ISBN-13: 978-0805019933

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.