Showing Buyer Beware by John Lutz

Kidnap proves only the prelude to a diabolically clever scheme of fraud and murder in this vivid tale of taut suspense.

Private investigator Alo Nudger didn't have to think twice about accepting the $2,500 fee from Gordon Clark, whose seven-year-old daughter had been "kidnapped" by his ex-wife, Joan. After all, the pay was good, and the job seemed simple enough: bring young Melissa back from Florida to her frantic father. Nudger arrives at his destination to find only an empty house but soon locates Melissa in the safekeeping of a neighbor and reckons his job is done... or is it?

For now Joan is missing, and the man she and Melissa had been living with is murdered. Nudger's new proposition from an equally distraught parent—Joan's father—is not so readily appealing as before. Fifty thousand dollars to locate a missing person is a tempting sum, indeed—assuming Alo Nudger can stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

"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 was released as the major motion picture, Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda.

About the Series
St. Louis private eye ALO NUDGER is perhaps the most Chaplinesque of fictional gumshoes. Where other P.I.s are hardcases living on cigarettes, booze, broads and danger, Alo survives (just) on antacid tablets (it was his nervous stomach that forced Alo to resign from the police force) and grocery coupons.