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Alo Nudger #1
Buyer Beware
Hired to return a kidnapped child to her father, Alo Nudger discovers that he's been set up for fraud--and possibly murder. "One of the best and most unusual novels in the history of private eye fiction."--Cedar-Rapids Gazette. Lutz's bestselling novel SWF Seeks Same will soon be a major motion picture.
- GenresMystery
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
John Lutz
240 books303 followersLibrarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Lutz has captivated suspense enthusiasts for over four decades. He has been one of the premier voices in contemporary hard-boiled fiction. His work includes political suspense, private eye novels, urban suspense, humor, occult, crime caper, police procedural, espionage, historical, futuristic, amateur detective, thriller; virtually every mystery sub-genre. John Lutz published his first short story in 1966 in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and has been publishing regularly ever since. He is the author of more than fifty novels and 250 short stories and articles.
His novels and short fiction have been translated into virtually every language and adapted for almost every medium. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, The Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is the author of two private eye series, the Nudger series, set in his home town of St. Louis, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as many non-series suspense novels. His SWF SEEKS SAME was made into the hit movie SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and his novel THE EX was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay.
Lutz and his wife, Barbara, split their time between St. Louis and Sarasota, Florida.
John Lutz has captivated suspense enthusiasts for over four decades. He has been one of the premier voices in contemporary hard-boiled fiction. His work includes political suspense, private eye novels, urban suspense, humor, occult, crime caper, police procedural, espionage, historical, futuristic, amateur detective, thriller; virtually every mystery sub-genre. John Lutz published his first short story in 1966 in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and has been publishing regularly ever since. He is the author of more than fifty novels and 250 short stories and articles.
His novels and short fiction have been translated into virtually every language and adapted for almost every medium. He is a past president of both Mystery Writers of America and Private Eye Writers of America. Among his awards are the MWA Edgar, the PWA Shamus, The Trophee 813 Award for best mystery short story collection translated into the French language, the PWA Life Achievement Award, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is the author of two private eye series, the Nudger series, set in his home town of St. Louis, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as many non-series suspense novels. His SWF SEEKS SAME was made into the hit movie SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and his novel THE EX was made into the HBO original movie of the same title, for which he co-authored the screenplay.
Lutz and his wife, Barbara, split their time between St. Louis and Sarasota, Florida.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 21, 2012
A man hires Alo Nudger to retrieve the daughter his ex-wife absconded to Florida with. Nudger finds the daughter and winds up tied up in another case entirely, a case involving her mother, a millionaire's missing daughter, and the mysterious deaths of businessmen all over the country. Can Nudger find the millionaire's missing daughter or is it already too late?
Over the last six months or so, I've been exercising more retraint than usual in regard to buying books. Unfortunately, I had a hankering for a detective yarn over the weekend and discovered I didn't have any on my unread pile. I decided to give John Lutz's Alo Nudger a chance and I'm glad I did.
Nudger's not your typical detective. He specializes in retrieving children that have been kidnapped by one of their parents following a divorce. He lives in a trailer, just barely getting by. He's not handsome, brave, tough, or quick-whitted. He's smart, though, and tenacious. He reminds me of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder to a degree. Both are former cops that left the force and both are driven by guild for past sins. In Nudger's case, he was having an affair with an alderman's wife and booted from the force. Shortly thereafter, his wife left him and took their two kids. She remarried awhile later, only to be killed in a car accident with her new husband and Nudger's two kids.
When I started Buyer Beware, I had no idea how complex it was going to get. He found Clark's missing daughter in just a few pages, before getting ensnared in the web around the child's mother. Like Lawrence Block, Lutz had me guessing for most of the story. I had no idea what was going on until the last forty pages or so. I felt like I was learning the details along with Nudger and could never manage to get ahead of him in the story of Gratuity Insurance and the connections it had to various players in the story.
Another thing I liked is that Lutz resisted the temptation that many detective fiction writers succumb to. While there were two or three attractive women in the story, Nudger didn't wind up in bed with any of them. Or even get close. I hate when writers force a hookup just to do it.
I guess I'd better wrap this up or the review is going to wind up being as long as the book. While the down on his luck detective thing has been done, John Lutz manages to inject enough life into Alo Nudger that I'll be looking for more of Nudger's cases in the future.
Over the last six months or so, I've been exercising more retraint than usual in regard to buying books. Unfortunately, I had a hankering for a detective yarn over the weekend and discovered I didn't have any on my unread pile. I decided to give John Lutz's Alo Nudger a chance and I'm glad I did.
Nudger's not your typical detective. He specializes in retrieving children that have been kidnapped by one of their parents following a divorce. He lives in a trailer, just barely getting by. He's not handsome, brave, tough, or quick-whitted. He's smart, though, and tenacious. He reminds me of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder to a degree. Both are former cops that left the force and both are driven by guild for past sins. In Nudger's case, he was having an affair with an alderman's wife and booted from the force. Shortly thereafter, his wife left him and took their two kids. She remarried awhile later, only to be killed in a car accident with her new husband and Nudger's two kids.
When I started Buyer Beware, I had no idea how complex it was going to get. He found Clark's missing daughter in just a few pages, before getting ensnared in the web around the child's mother. Like Lawrence Block, Lutz had me guessing for most of the story. I had no idea what was going on until the last forty pages or so. I felt like I was learning the details along with Nudger and could never manage to get ahead of him in the story of Gratuity Insurance and the connections it had to various players in the story.
Another thing I liked is that Lutz resisted the temptation that many detective fiction writers succumb to. While there were two or three attractive women in the story, Nudger didn't wind up in bed with any of them. Or even get close. I hate when writers force a hookup just to do it.
I guess I'd better wrap this up or the review is going to wind up being as long as the book. While the down on his luck detective thing has been done, John Lutz manages to inject enough life into Alo Nudger that I'll be looking for more of Nudger's cases in the future.
March 23, 2012
I am done with 1970s crime thrillers. And, I need a two hour refund to my life pot. Ross Macdonald and Lawrence Sanders do it better.
Preposterous plot. The pudding, people, has been over-egged.
Preposterous plot. The pudding, people, has been over-egged.
April 7, 2014
RATING: 4.25
It’s a pretty standard story being told by Gordon Clark, one that a PI specializing in recovering children has heard many times before. There’s been a divorce. At first the wife, Joan, followed the visitation procedures as laid out by the court. But now she’s not allowing Gordon to see their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa. Joan Clark is the daughter of a well-to-do plastics manufacturer by the name of Carlon and currently residing in Florida with another man. Melissa was not to be removed from the state of Minnesota without the court’s permission, therefore putting legal custody in the father’s hands. So Gordon is clearly in the right. If he weren’t, Alo would never become involved.
Yes, a standard case just like the ones Alo Nudger has handled many times before. But if there weren’t any complications, this book would have been a short story. Nudger goes to Florida and finds the child, a dead body and a missing mother. What’s even more puzzling is that Joan Clark has been living in rather impecunious circumstances and that her father was not even aware that she was nearby. He then hires Alo to continue the investigation to find Joan even though that’s outside the scope of his usual work.
I found this book to be very satisfactory and was pleased to make the acquaintance of a private investigator heretofore unknown to me. Alo has a few interesting quirks, the most prominent being that he has an extremely nervous stomach and is constantly popping antacids. Lutz writes in the style of Bill Pronzini. The plotting is excellent, with many twists and turns that never result in a loss of credibility on the part of the reader. The Alo Nudger series (10 books) is now high on my To Be Found list.
It’s a pretty standard story being told by Gordon Clark, one that a PI specializing in recovering children has heard many times before. There’s been a divorce. At first the wife, Joan, followed the visitation procedures as laid out by the court. But now she’s not allowing Gordon to see their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa. Joan Clark is the daughter of a well-to-do plastics manufacturer by the name of Carlon and currently residing in Florida with another man. Melissa was not to be removed from the state of Minnesota without the court’s permission, therefore putting legal custody in the father’s hands. So Gordon is clearly in the right. If he weren’t, Alo would never become involved.
Yes, a standard case just like the ones Alo Nudger has handled many times before. But if there weren’t any complications, this book would have been a short story. Nudger goes to Florida and finds the child, a dead body and a missing mother. What’s even more puzzling is that Joan Clark has been living in rather impecunious circumstances and that her father was not even aware that she was nearby. He then hires Alo to continue the investigation to find Joan even though that’s outside the scope of his usual work.
I found this book to be very satisfactory and was pleased to make the acquaintance of a private investigator heretofore unknown to me. Alo has a few interesting quirks, the most prominent being that he has an extremely nervous stomach and is constantly popping antacids. Lutz writes in the style of Bill Pronzini. The plotting is excellent, with many twists and turns that never result in a loss of credibility on the part of the reader. The Alo Nudger series (10 books) is now high on my To Be Found list.
July 29, 2017
I was disappointed with this novel. I have read many John Lutz books a decided to try another one of his series. All Nudger. I understand this is one of his earlier writings, so I will still continue on with the Nudger Series. I did find this one kind of hard to follow. There were a lot of characters thrown into the story quickly and found myself having to go back a few pages to see who they were again. Sometimes he would use their first names, sometimes their last, so I really had to know who was who, to understand the end of the book. I hope the rest of the Nudger Series gets more stars as I read on.
June 7, 2025
This is the first John Lutz book I've read but I wasn't impressed. Nudger had too many negative character traits and wasn't likeable as the protagonist. Tthe plot was convoluted and didn't really ring true as a cabal of businessmen up to something that I never really understood. I think will go back and reread some Lawrence Block.
February 28, 2013
Buyer Beware is book 1 of the Alo Nudger series. In books 2, 3, and 4, Nudger is an Everyman character with whom one can relate. He struggles to find self-respect in a vocation that is more a matter of circumstance than a calling. He constantly munches antacid tablets to calm a nervous stomach that reacts to his ex-wife’s demands for past-due alimony, to crime scenes, and to impending danger. Alo is a quiet plodder who side steps the obstacles in his way. He is a hero for battling past his fear and anxiety and for not swaying from his personal code of ethics. Every time luck smacks him down, he gets back up and keeps going. His simple refusal to stay down is the undoing of his adversaries.
In Buyer Beware, Nudger is even more realistic—slightly less noble, more self-pitying, and more concerned with his own comfort. Perhaps what rings true about him are traits a reader might not want to acknowledge in him-/herself. This makes Buyer Beware’s Nudger less desirable a companion than he is in later stories. Book 1 even has a different family history, which Lutz changed in later stories.
If you are looking for another Detective Frank Quinn, you can skip this book (and all of the Nudger series). Buyer Beware has some entertainment value, but it is not as good as the Nudger stories that follow.
In Buyer Beware, Nudger is even more realistic—slightly less noble, more self-pitying, and more concerned with his own comfort. Perhaps what rings true about him are traits a reader might not want to acknowledge in him-/herself. This makes Buyer Beware’s Nudger less desirable a companion than he is in later stories. Book 1 even has a different family history, which Lutz changed in later stories.
If you are looking for another Detective Frank Quinn, you can skip this book (and all of the Nudger series). Buyer Beware has some entertainment value, but it is not as good as the Nudger stories that follow.
September 24, 2013
1970s PI thriller without a lot of thrills.
Alo Nudger is a PI who specializes in finding children taken by a parent. this was in the days before this was considered kidnapping. Anyway, he looks for a little girl, and finds a deep dark conspiracy, which seems to be all planning and no payout.
Filled with the faux cynicsim of the time.
Alo Nudger is a PI who specializes in finding children taken by a parent. this was in the days before this was considered kidnapping. Anyway, he looks for a little girl, and finds a deep dark conspiracy, which seems to be all planning and no payout.
Filled with the faux cynicsim of the time.
November 1, 2016
I was previously acquainted with Nudger from a book of short stories I garnered at a book sale, but this, the first of Lutz' series with the detective ( and his queasy stomach), is a delightfully twisted tale of twins and deception and, of course, murder.
Read
April 6, 2014Keeps you hooked til the very end every time. P.I. thriller/mystery.
Want to Read
March 6, 2019Synopsis: hired to return a kidnapped child to her father, Nudger discovers that he's been set up for fraud, and possibly murder.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews