Showing results by author "John Lutz" in All Categories

In the year 2038, there’s only one destination that can play host to the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers: the Pengalaman Island Resort and Virtual Reality Theme Park. Located on a private South Pacific island, guests here live out their wildest fantasies in custom-made virtual reality simulations while also enjoying the usual amenities of an exclusive five-star getaway. All is relatively breezy until famed billionaire and avid guest, Mr. Wagner, goes missing within a virtual simulation. His only hope? A daring rescue led by Derek Ambrose and his ragtag search party.

Er war die Ausgeburt der Hölle, der Sohn des Teufels: Lazarus, der Seelenlose. Auf einer Insel hatte er unzählige Jünger um sich geschart und bereitete dort im Geheimen den Angriff auf die Menschheit vor. Warum ich das weiß? Ich erfuhr auf einer Schiffsreise davon, bei einer schicksalhaften Begegnung mit einem Geistlichen. Reverend Malligan teilte mir dort mit, dass es meine Bestimmung war, gegen diesen mächtigen Feind alles Guten anzutreten, denn nur ich sollte ihn der Überlieferung nach an der Ergreifung der Weltherrschaft hindern können.

Eis essen mit einem Brontosaurus? Ein Basketball-Match mit Michael Jordan? Alles kein Problem im Virtual-Reality-Resort Pangalaman Island. Derek, Sohn der Besitzerin, konnte seine kühnsten Träume schon als Kind ausleben. Nun hat er das ganze Imperium geerbt–und steht vor einem Problem: Der Promi Mr. Wagner ist in einem virtuellen Abenteuer verschwunden.

A major casino robbery turns sour when the getaway car breaks down in the desert. The robbers come across a nearby cabin but it is inhabited by an old loner. The three robbers try and hold him hostage, but he escapes. It becomes their biggest mistake.

Intrigue, crime, and murder create suspense in this edge-of-your-seat collection of cat mystery stories whose plots are all centered on a beloved feline, written by some of the finest, best-selling mystery writers of all time.

Mary Arlington only feels alive when she is dancing. The rest of her life, dominated by a violent boyfriend and a mother intent on drinking herself to death, isn’t worth being awake for, but when she dances the tango her troubles disappear. She’s gotten so good that her studio is taking her to the national competition in Ohio, where she will prove to the world and to herself that her hobby is more than a pastime. That is, if she can stay alive until the music starts to play.

When the men find him, the boy’s legs look like they were run through a wood-chipper. He’s bleeding heavily and near death, but he still has strength to tell them of the monster that attacked him: a dark, massive creature that emerged from the bottom of the lake. The child dies before he can say more. Sheriff Billy Wintone has seen too much superstition, drunkenness, and rage in this small Ozarks town to believe the delirious boy’s tale of a monster lurking under the lake’s dark waters. Like it or not, however, Wintone must scour the woods for the man or beast who killed the child before the start of fishing season.

No one thought Curtis Colt had been railroaded for the shooting of a liquor store owner, least of all St. Louis private investigator Alo Nudger. It had been an open-and-shut case of cold blooded murder, and the people of Missouri were just waiting for Colt to be strapped into the electric chair - after all, three eyewitnesses couldn't be wrong. But as time runs out on the convicted killer, Nudger receives a call from Candy Ann Adams, Colt's finance, who insists he's innocent, because she knows who really pulled the trigger.

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 70 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 70 is the new 40, golf carts are the only way to get around, and death from natural causes is nowhere to be found.

Ernie, a down-on-his-luck gambler who owes the wrong people $1,000, is visited by two enforcers. To escape them, he climbs out onto a narrow building ledge, where he is unseen by the people far below. His only hope of survival lies in his imaginative way with a deck of cards.

Along a beautiful stretch of beach sits a state institution for the criminally insane. Among its inmates are a man who killed his wife with a wine bottle; an ex-butcher who put strange substances into meat; and a man who pushed his daughter out of a 40-story window. When an inmate is found dead on the beach, the rest of the men eye each other coldly - for each of them had a motive to murder the unpopular victim.

He mutilates his victims. Slices their throats. And carves an X into their flesh. Five years ago, he claimed the lives of six women. Then the killings abruptly stopped - no one knows why. Ex-homicide detective Frank Quinn remembers. Which is why he's shocked to see one of the dead women in his...

Fred Carver, an Orlando cop until a gunman's bullet shattered his kneecap, acquires a cane and a new career, private investigating. From beach resorts and luxury condos, to the swamps and smuggler's coves of the Everglades, Carver looks for a man who police think committed suicide.

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.

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.

Private eye Fred Carver investigates the slaughter of an ex-cop, the murder of a man who was found stuffed to the gills with cocaine, and other crimes.

Fred Carver is hired by his good friend, Lieutenant Alfonso DeSoto of the Orlando police, to investigate the death of his uncle at Sunhaven, a local nursing home. Carver is harassed by Raphael Ortiz, a viciously depraved thug bent on discouraging Carver from investigating Sunhaven.

A serial killer is on the loose, a maniac wielding a homemade flame thrower fashioned from a scuba tank. He has murdered three people - and one of them is private detective Fred Carver's eight-year-old son. Carver will do anything to find his son's killer and exact a father's revenge.

Listen to mystery stories by today's top writers and the masters who inspired them. The idea for this collection came to Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Lawrence Block when he was asked, "What is your favorite mystery story?" Block compiled this unique collection by posing the same question to some of today's favorite writers of the genre, including Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, and John Lutz.

St. Louis PI Nudger is called to help stop a man from jumping to his death. The man has asked for Nudger by name, and when Nudger fails to save him, he feels responsible for the death and tries to find out what was behind the suicide. He turns up a fellow detective who leads him on a trail of greed and blackmail.