Torch

From Publishers WeeklyLutz's Florida-based crime capers, most recently Spark and Hot , feature PI Fred Carver. Tense and relentless tales, they are essentially linear stories in which the reader is drawn along in the wake of brutal and seemingly unrelated events. Lutz highlights his series' hallmarks: Carver has a bullet-damaged bum knee, a powerful upper body, a black journalist girlfriend named Beth, an urbane Latino cop pal named Desoto and an alarmingly redneck cop enemy named McGregor. His cases tend to explode dramatically, often moments after he's been hired. No exception here. Young wife and mother Donna Winship throws herself in front of a truck minutes after handing Carver a check and asking him to follow her. She told him she was unhappily married, guiltily having an affair and worried about her husband's finding out. The day after her death, her husband Mark shoots himself. He was also less than faithful. Donna's lover has two names and works as a male model and occasional paid escort. Mark's lover also models once in a while. A coincidence? Hardly, since both extramarital interests moonlight for the same agency. Motivated by a sense of responsibility, curiosity and Donna's check, Carver continues to investigate and is soon joined by Beth, who is working on the story. Another death knocks down a third side of a "love square." Lutz's blunt character sketches and gradually connected events are subtly effective. His dogged Carver is a believably heroic guy, tough, scarred and able to exhibit fear and courage at the same time. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIn the Florida of crime fiction, only the thinnest of lines separates the everyday civilized world from a subterranean sickness oozing near the surface like sewage in an untended sinkhole. The function of the Florida private eye is to stand guard between these worlds, a hard-boiled catcher in the rye keeping as many innocents as possible from slipping into the slime. Lutz's Fred Carver performs that function as well as anyone since Travis McGee, and Carver's Florida is way more bent than McGee's ever was. In his eighth adventure, the somewhat mellowed Carver--thank his no-nonsense lover, black journalist Beth, for that--takes on the peculiar case of a married woman who wants him to follow her and her lover. Soon the woman, her husband, and her lover are all dead, and Carver is losing the battle of the slime three to zip. That's not the final score, of course, but even when Carver wins a few, there's always a sense of loss, of order giving a bit more ground to chaos. Call it a moral defeat: Florida is full of them, and Lutz makes us feel their sting. Bill Ott