Until You Are Dead
By John Lutz
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Copyright
2012 / John Lutz
Copy-edited by: Mari Adkins
Cover Design By: David Dodd
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John Lutz's 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. He is the author of more than forty novels and over 200 short stories and articles. His novels and short fiction have been translated into almost 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 St. Louis, Missouri, and the Carver series, set in Florida, as well as many non-series 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.
When Lutz isn't writing, he's reading, following baseball, dining out with friends, or going to movies or plays.
Lutz and his wife, Barbara, split their time between St. Louis and Sarasota, Florida.
Book List
Story Collections:
Better Mousetraps
Endless Road
Shadows Everywhere
The Nudger Dilemmas
Until You Are Dead
Novels:
Bloodfire
Bonegrinder
Burn
Buyer Beware
Chill of Night
Dancer's Debt
Dancing With the Dead
Darker Than Night
Death by Jury
Diamond Eyes
Exiled
Fear the Night
Final Seconds
Flame
Hot
In for the Kill
Jericho Man
Kiss
Lazarus Man
Lightning
Mister X
Night Kills
Nightlines
Oops!
Pulse
Ride the Lightning
Scorcher
Serial
Shadowtown
Single White Female
Spark
SWF Seeks Same
The Ex
The Eye
The Night Caller
The Night Spider/ Night Victims
The Night Watcher
The Shadow Man
The Right to Sing the Blues
The Truth of the Matter
Thicker Than Blood
Time Exposure
Torch
Tropical Heat
Urge to Kill
www.
johnlutz
online.com
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F
or a writer, culling old work for the best and most lasting can be an unsettling trip into the past. I made the journey with unsuspected reluctance, looking right, looking left. There were my old friends Dr. Mindle the psychiatrist, Ruddy Kane the free-living trucker, Frank Seabold the dual defendant, Thana the curious kidnap victim, O'Hara the terrorist on the run, Snodman the smug cop. How had they held up since the years when my hair was dark and I was stronger and leaner of limb?
Not bad, not bad at all.
Of course a few of the stories are somewhat dated, for which I ask the reader's indulgence. There is the Last Stop Lounge, a hangout for workers rumored to manufacture "a component for the hydrogen bomb." Hit men sure work cheap. And Richard Widmark is still in the wrong place at the wrong time. But for the most part I'm pleased with my journey, and I've tried to bring back the best for you. My old friends haven't aged as much as I have (in fact, not at all), and series characters Nudger and Carver are in a time warp we all should enjoy. Estimable office employee Miss Knickelsworth is sans computer and using an electric typewriter, yet this tale of a light and power company monopoly seems shockingly current.
One reason I believe these stories have held up well is because they are mysteries. That is to say they are
stories
.
They are about something. There are problems, and then progressions to logical solutions--or at least conclusions. The beginning, middle and end are here, and, I would like to think, flesh-and-blood characters that are timeless even if their hairdos are bouffant and their lapels are an unstylish width. (There are no leisure suits; I have shame.) But most of all I believe the stories still work because they sprang from my intense desire to express them. Writers who love the short story form are from time to time struck by ideas that must be expressed no other way. There are intriguing concepts which are too spare for novels, or perhaps for commercial reasons they are unpublishable as books or articles. But
Wow! â
we've just gotta share them with somebody, put them into story form. Thousands of years ago folks like us jabbered at fellow brutes squatting around campfires. More years ago we tried to scare the bejibbers out of everyone in the dark shelter of the communal cave. You can't stop us anymore than we can stop ourselves. You can't shut us up. Storytelling is genetic.