Fred Carver series by John Lutz (1~10)
Requirements: ePUB Reader | 29 MB | Version: Retail
Overview: John Lutz published his first short story in 1966 in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and has been publishing regularly ever since. His work includes political suspense, private eye novels, urban suspense, humor, occult, crime caper, police procedural, espionage, historical, futuristic, amateur detective — virtually every mystery sub-genre.
Genre: Mystery
1. Tropical Heat: Forced into early retirement by a bullet to the knee, ex-cop Fred Carver undertakes a missing persons case that quickly places him in mortal danger. When the criminal’s bullet shattered his knee, Fred Carver’s colleagues called him lucky. Between his pension and the insurance check, they said, he had a nice, easy retirement to look forward to. But Fred Carver would rather have his knee. His career finished, his marriage over, he takes a half-hearted stab at private detective work, and is already sick of it by the time he meets Edwina Talbot, a beautiful woman who wants him to find her dead lover. Of course, Edwina doesn’t believe her lover is actually dead. Every piece of evidence at the crime scene pointed to suicide, but as far a she’s concerned her man is just missing and Fred Carver is going to bring him back. Carver wants nothing to do with it, but he can’t say no to a little adventure. Some men just aren’t built for taking it easy.
2. Scorcher: A serial killer claims the life of Fred Carver’s eight-year-old son, sending the ex-cop on a mad hunt for vengeance. A year ago, Fred Carver was nothing but a disabled ex-cop whose career, marriage, and family were all little more than fading memories. But then, while working as a private detective, he met Edwina Talbot, and ten months of life together has made him happier than he has been in years. But fate does not let men like Fred Carver stay happy for long. On the eve of a visit from his ex-wife and their two children, tragedy upends his new life. As if Florida in July weren’t hot enough, a madman is on a killing spree with a home-made flame-thrower. After Fred’s eight-year-old son becomes the third victim, a man who has spent his life trying to catch murderers now has some killing to do of his own.
3. Kiss: For Bert Renway, it starts out as a simple proposition: a fat bundle of money to spend a few weeks impersonating Frank Wesley, a local tycoon. But after a while Bert grows suspicious of the easy money, and seeks help in the shape of Fred Carver, an ex–Orlando policeman turned private investigator. Like Bert, Carver smells trouble, and agrees to help him find out who his employers are and why they want him to play Wesley. Neither of them is suspicious enough. A few minutes after Bert leaves, an explosion sounds in the parking lot—the new client’s car gone up in a burst of flame. When they pull his body from the wreckage, dental records identify him not as Bert Renway, but as Frank Wesley. Carver doesn’t care. He’s on the case no matter who the man was.
4. Flame: For Bert Renway, it starts out as a simple proposition: a fat bundle of money to spend a few weeks impersonating Frank Wesley, a local tycoon. But after a while Bert grows suspicious of the easy money, and seeks help in the shape of Fred Carver, an ex–Orlando policeman turned private investigator. Like Bert, Carver smells trouble, and agrees to help him find out who his employers are and why they want him to play Wesley. Neither of them is suspicious enough. A few minutes after Bert leaves, an explosion sounds in the parking lot—the new client’s car gone up in a burst of flame. When they pull his body from the wreckage, dental records identify him not as Bert Renway, but as Frank Wesley. Carver doesn’t care. He’s on the case no matter who the man was.
5. Bloodfire: When a nervous husband asks him to track down his heroin addict wife, Fred Carver learns that not every client can be trusted
When he meets Bob Ghostly, it’s hardly the first time that Fred Carver has been asked to find a missing spouse. But Ghostly’s tale about a beautiful woman who fled for no apparent reason doesn’t quite convince Carver, who presses for more detail. Finally Ghostly admits it. His wife was beautiful, intelligent, and kind, but she was also a heroin addict. She fled their Florida home with half their savings—nearly $10,000—and he’s afraid she’s going to put it straight into her veins. Carver goes looking for the troubled young bride, but when she shows up on her own—terrified and looking for protection—a routine case becomes one that could prove lethal for the well-meaning PI.
6. Hot: In this latest Fred Carver mystery, Lutz sets his ageing knight errant from Orlando, Fla., against younger villains on the nowhere fringes of the Florida Keys. Crusty old Henry Tiller–an ex-cop from Milwaukee living on tiny Key Montaigne–suspects that his wealthy retired neighbour, Walter Rainer, is a drug dealer responsible for the death of a 13-year-old runaway. Brushed off by local cops, Tiller hires Carver to investigate. Carver knows more is involved than just an old man’s active imagination when Tiller is hit by a car; later, his own car is followed to Key Montaigne and he receives a death threat. After Tiller dies from his injuries, Carver brings in his live-in lover Beth, ex-wife of a drug kingpin and a martial arts expert. Obsessed with nailing Rainer, Carver and Beth ignore warnings to keep constant watch on the Rainer household. While Lutz creates terrific characters in this concise, crisply told escapade, the surveillance of the bad guys drones on, and when the true nature of Rainer’s criminal activity is unmasked, the payoff doesn’t seem to warrant the buildup. Despite these lapses, Carver remains one of the genre’s most credible protagonists.
7. Spark: Fred Carver investigates a series of suspicious deaths in a stately Florida retirement community. Hattie Evans, a retired schoolteacher, isn’t one to fuss. When her husband drops dead of a heart attack, she does her best to move on without too many tears. After all, Jerome was seventy years old. But an anonymous note, asserting that her husband was murdered, shakes her resolve, and she seeks out help. The police are useless, save that they send her to Fred Carver—a former Orlando cop who turned PI when a bullet shattered his left knee. Her case takes Carver into the depths of Solartown: an old-age mecca where seventy is the new forty, golf carts are the only way to get around, and death from natural causes is nowhere to be found.
8. Torch: When a client dies in an apparent suicide, Florida detective Frank Carver suspects murder. Donna Winship is an ordinary woman with a typical problem. No longer in love with her husband, she has taken to spending evenings and long afternoons with a new man. Fearful that her husband will learn the truth and be overwhelmed with jealousy, she contacts Fred Carver, an ex-cop turned PI, and asks him to tail her. Minutes after he agrees, Donna drives her car into a speeding tractor trailer. Dead on impact. The local police are happy to call it a suicide, but Carver is determined to serve his client, even in death. More bloodshed follows, as Donna’s husband kills himself and her lover disappears without a trace. No love triangle is simple, but this one could cost Fred Carver his life.
9. Burn: When he is accused of stalking a woman he swears he’s never met, a local businessman asks Fred Carver for help clearing his name. Joel Brandt swears he’s never met the woman before. His wife dead six months before, the small-time businessman is perplexed when Del Moray police inform him that a local woman, Marla Cloy, has accused him of harassing her. According to her, Joel has been lurking outside of her house, following her car, even assaulting her at the grocery store. Brandt says it’s all a lie, but the police don’t believe him. He goes to Fred Carver, an ex-cop turned PI, for help clearing his name. The harder Carver looks, the less he understands. There is no apparent connection between the two people, and yet one of them is trying to destroy the other’s life. When this game turns deadly, who will be the first to go?
10. Lightning: Heat-seeking Florida PI Fred Carver tackles the highly flammable abortion issue in his searing 10th outing. Carver’s live-in lover, Beth Jackson, who is black, discovers that she is pregnant and, after much thought, decides that she will proceed with the pregnancy. When she stops by the Women’s Light Clinic to cancel her appointment, she passes through a gauntlet of anti-abortion protesters from Operation Alive. An explosion rips the clinic just after she enters-killing a doctor and a patient and injuring Beth, who loses her baby. Investigations by the FBI and the local police, headed by William McGregor (surely one of the most unsavoury police officers in the genre) result in an early arrest of a young and fanatical member of Operation Alive. On his own, Carver investigates Operation Alive’s leader, Rev. Martin Freel of the Church of the Clear Connection, and talks with the widow of the slain doctor, with a surviving physician determined to carry on the clinic’s work and with other witnesses and suspects. Another bomb explodes at another clinic, and a sadistic, Bible-spouting killer surfaces. Behind the intransigent and hackneyed rhetoric of both sides, Carver finds venality aplenty as he and Beth attempt to come to terms with their loss. Veteran novelist Lutz ties some nifty twists into his plot, which moves quickly towards a final deadly confrontation.
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