Nightlines

Aldo Nudger must be the least healthy private eye in the history of the crime novel-delicate of stomach ,frail of constitution etc.This does not diminish the enjoyment of the series however ,unless you insist on the type of hero who can down copious amounts of booze ,wolf down a burger while on stakeout and live a generally unhealthy lifetsyle without detriment to his overall physical wellbeing Here the St Louis based 'tec is hired by the wealthy Jeanette Boyington whose sister Jenine has recently been murdered.Jeanette believes the killer is still loose ,not a view endorsed by the local police,and she engages Nudger to look into the case .They come round to her and Nudger's way of thinking as other victims turn up ,killed in the same way as Jenine .The killer makes contact with his victims using the eponymous nightlines -they are used in the day as testlines but become chatlines in the nocturnal hours ,used by the lost and lonely to make contacts and set up meetings . Jeanette proposes uising herself as bait -posing as a potential date/victim while Nudger trails them .The investigation is further complicated by the hostility of Jeanette's mother ,the fierce matriarchalAgnes who tries to dissuade him from remaining on the case and is not averse to sending in a brutish thug named Hugo Rumbo to "persuade"him to do so .Add his emotional involvement with a damaged and suicidal woman Claudio ,who is trying to get her life back on track ,and aldo has got his hands full . The climax is tense and gripping as Jeanette spirals out of control and there is a blood drenched climax at her apartment as she confronts the suspected killer.There is a deft twist ending which I will not divulge . I regret the end of the series in recent years as Aldo is a fine creation and the series always displyed a great degree of warmth and compassion without descending into sentimentality. The book is tense and well plotted and recommended unreservedly to lovers of the crime novel in its "medium boiled" mode

I'm sorry that John Lutz got tired of Alo as a protagonist. His later novels are in a different vein of Mystery/Suspense and not quite as entertaining to me. Albeit, Lutz is still one helleva good writer!

john lutz is the from the old school--lean prose, good characterization.