From Publishers Weekly
St. Louis shamus Alo Nudger, still addicted to antacids, has a piranha of an ex-wife and an office above a shop selling the world's greasiest doughnuts. And, as usual, he's sleuthing through a humid Missouri summer. From the start, his latest case, following Thicker Than Blood, has a nasty taste. Roger Dupont is pretty cool for a man accused of murdering his missing wife. He has hired the dumbest lawyer in the Western world and remains serene as the case against him gathers momentum. Then a few odd breaks occur and he's freed. Nudger, who was hired by the dumb lawyer, collects a fee; the lawyer gets more work; Dupont gives up his job at the bank; the wife remains missing. Half a year later, her body is found. Dupont can't be tried again in a court of law. But Nudger reconvenes the case in the court of his own suspicious mind. Lutz includes a number of cute sidebars as his PI pursues justice, among them Nudger's series of stumbles in an increasingly politically correct world. Few Nudger tales have this high a body count at the conclusion, but the pieces all fit and the fade from humor to homicide is never less than convincing.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
If one were to check St. Louis detective Alo Nudger's fictional ancestors, one might discover that John Lutz' tough-as-push-pins hero is a distant cousin of Mayberry's own Barnard P. Fife. Unlike the Hammers, Marlowes, and Spensers, Alo and Barney are always afraid--of criminals, public humiliation, most women, and their own expectations of themselves. Here Nudger is hired by Lawrence Fleck, an odious and permanently small-time attorney, to investigate his client, banker Roger Dupont, who is about to stand trial for the murder of his wife. The twist is that Fleck wants Nudger to find incriminating evidence because he wants his client to accept a plea bargain. Lutz is a master storyteller, and this plot is an intricate masterpiece. And Nudger is all of us, living a life marked not by great accomplishment but, occasionally, by small personal triumphs.
Wes Lukowsky
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
