WITH MORE THAN forty novels and two hundred short stories to his credit, John Thomas Lutz (1939– ) has demonstrated both the ingenuity and work ethic of historically prolific writers who turned out entertaining prose year after year. Born in Dallas, Lutz moved to St. Louis when young and has lived there ever since. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1975, he had jobs as a construction worker, theater usher, warehouse worker, truck driver, and switchboard operator for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
His writing career has been as varied as his background, producing private-eye stories and many other types of fiction, including political suspense, humor, occult, psychological suspense, espionage, historical, futuristic, police procedural, and urban suspense. When asked why he writes serial-killer novels, he replied, “Serial paychecks.” His first series character, Alo Nudger, who debuted in Buyer Beware (1976), is an unlikely private eye, so compassionate that he appears meek, a borderline coward paralyzed by overdue bills, clients who refuse to pay him, and a blood-sucking former wife.
A more traditional character is the Florida-based P.I. Fred Carver, a former cop forced off the job when a street punk kneecapped him; his first appearance is in Tropical Heat (1986). Lutz’s most commercially successful book is probably SWF Seeks Same (1990), a suspense thriller that served as the basis for the 1992 movie Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. His novel The Ex (1996) was adapted for an HBO movie of the same title in 1997; Lutz coauthored the screenplay.
Lutz has served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for three Edgar Awards, winning in 1986 for best short story for “Ride the Lightning.”
“The Infernal Machine” was first published in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh (New York, Carroll & Graf, 1987).