Mon 29 Feb 2016
Archived PI Novel Review: JOHN LUTZ – Buyer Beware.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
JOHN LUTZ – Buyer Beware. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1976. Paperjacks, paperback, 1986. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1992.
Private eyes tend to specialize these days. Alo, Nudger, for example, comes highly recommended in child custody cases. That he’s not the hard-boiled type is well illustrated by his dependence on antacid tablets, but enough money can overcome many qualms.
Murder is not in his line, but once persuaded, he takes his investigation into the efficient world of business and finance, which is faced with a deadly extension of the rules it plays by.
Lutz has an eye for people and background that adds greatly to a tale that holds its own most of the way, yet I did wish the scheme were not ultimately so far-fetched, made all the more so by the rushed wrap-up.
Rating: C plus.
The Alo Nudger series —
1. Buyer Beware (1976)
2. Night Lines (1985)
3. The Right to Sing the Blues (1986)
4. Ride the Lightning (1987)
5. Dancer’s Debt (1988)
6. Time Exposure (1989)
7. Diamond Eyes (1990)
8. Thicker Than Blood (1993)
9. Death by Jury (1995)
10. Oops! (1998)
11. The Nudger Dilemmas (story collection, 2001)
February 29th, 2016 at 11:15 pm
NIGHT LINES was the first one I read in the Nudger series, and I liked that he was a bit more realistic than the average fictional eye, a little closer to the people I actually met in the business. It remains a solid series by a good writer.
March 1st, 2016 at 8:05 am
I read this novel in 1977 and my notes say:
“Alo Nudger is not your usual hardboiled private eye:
1–Divorced by wife. Later she and his two children are killed in a car accident.
2–Not successful with women like other PI’s.
3–A failure as a cop. In fact he worked 3 years as a TV clown, “Mr Happy”.
4–His client gyps him out of most of the promised $50,000 fee.
5–But most unusual of all, he is easily scared, suffers from a nervous and upset stomach, and feels fear.”
I thought he was far more believable than most fictional PI’s. One of my favorite PI series.
March 1st, 2016 at 12:55 pm
I think I have most of the books in the series, except for the short story collection, which I know I’ve never seen.
But I don’t believe I have read any of them, other than this first one, probably because of the nine year gap between the first and the second, which I noticed only now.
By 1985 I was not reading PI novels as voraciously as I was a decade earlier; I was in fact reading more science fiction than mysteries.
Times change. Now I’m reading almost no science fiction at all.
March 1st, 2016 at 2:25 pm
Because in the gaps in the series you had to have an eye out for these if you bought them from bookstores. I was pretty hit and miss, picking them up when I saw them in paperback.
March 2nd, 2016 at 12:27 pm
He also did the Fred Carver PI series which was more hard boiled than the Nudger series. He has a talent for creating “real” characters. I believe he went more of the stand alone route after the two PI series.