Sun 11 May 2025
JOHN LUTZ – Dancer’s Debt. Alo Nudger #5. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1988.
Alo Nudger is hired by a woman who is worried about the man she is living with, a Vietnam veteran with the soul of a poet and in debt to everyone in town (St. Louis). Recently he has been living in fear, of what he will not say.
Nudger’s client is someone he could fall in love with, and he very nearly does. There is also more to the case than the above. Lutz is a good writer, but not a great one. What builds to a climax then sadly fades to a neatly-wrapped anticlimax, and epilogue.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.4, March 1988.
May 12th, 2025 at 5:52 am
“Lutz is a good writer, but not a great one.” that may well be, but I have thoroughly enjoyed everything of his that I have read. Although Lutz went on to much greater success, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Alo Nudger
May 12th, 2025 at 7:46 am
I wish I remembered this book more than I do. Would I read it again, whenever I came across a copy? Yes, indeed I would. Or any book with Alo Nudger in it. They’re all good.
May 17th, 2025 at 1:16 am
Alo Nudger and Lutz had their own special place on my list of favortite eyes of the era largely because they didn’t read like anyone else.