THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO Jake Lomax

MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO – Blood Stone. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1988. Avon, paperback, 1990.

   Michael Allegretto’s second about Denver private eye Jacob Lomax (the first was Death on the Rocks, which I missed) is Blood Stone.

   I liked this quite a lot: the narrative moves, the plot is sound, and Allegretto has a nice ear for dialogue. Lloyd Fontaine, a burned-out drunk of a private investigator, asks Lomax for help. Lloyd is he’s still on the trail of millions in jewelry stolen twenty years earlier.

   Jake doesn’t take Fontaine seriously — until he finds Lloyd tortured and dead. To complicate matters, Jake’s nemesis in the cops thinks this is the chance he’s long lusted after to put Jake away. The man convicted in the robbery has just been released from prison, and all manner of greedy nasties have gathered for the kill.

   You’ll enjoy this.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 1989.


       The Jacob Lomax series —

1. Death on the Rocks (1987)    [Nominated for the 1988 Anthony and Macavity Awards; winner of the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel]

MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO Jake Lomax

2. Blood Stone (1988)
3. The Dead of Winter (1989)
4. Blood Relative (1992)
5. Grave Doubt (1995)

MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO Jake Lomax

    Jake Lomax was also in a handful of short stories, including “The Bookie’s Daughter,” which appears in Justice For Hire: The Fourth Private Eye Writers of America Anthology (1990)