CARVER, FRED

A Florida private detective created
by John LUTZ. The first Carver novel was Tropical Heat
(1986). Formerly of the Orlando police force, Carver was
made to retire after he was shot in the kneecap. Carver
is blue-eyed, curly haired, and muscular from swimming
and using his cane; he looks like a "feral cat." His friend
in the department is Alfonso DeSoto; his enemy is
Lieutenant William McGreggor, a sadist who does not
bathe regularly. Huge and blond-haired, McGreggor is
an unpleasant presence in the series. He is mean and
extremely vulgar, and expresses opinions so backward
it is a little hard to believe-not that someone would
have them, but would voice them. He hates both women
and non-whites.
The Carver novels are set in sunny, seedy Florida but
adhere to the old school of private eye writing, with
brooding reflections on corruption and greed. In both Kiss
(1988) and Spark (1993), Lutz used Florida retirement
communities as settings. Another retiree (a Milwaukee
cop) in Hot (1992) gets Carver involved in what appears
to be a drug smuggling case-or just an old crank's
harassment of his neighbor.
Some of the novels reflect Lutz's reputation for ingenuity
and clever plots. In Bum (1995), a man thinks he is
being falsely accused of stalking a woman he says he has
never met; he believes she is trying to entrap him so that
she can kill him and claim self-defense against a "stalker."
He lives alone, and so when she reports his presence to the
police, he cannot prove that he was sitting around at home.
The man, however, looks disturbingly like the serial killer
Ted Bundy, and the woman seems to be an ordinary
freelance writer. Carver can't find anything wrong, but then
is warned off the case in a violent manner by a giant with
smelly feet. In Torch (1994), a married woman hires Carver
to watch her and her lover for mysterious reasons; moments
afterward, she is run down by a truck.
During the series, Carver undergoes dreadful experiences
similar to Dave ROBICHAUX's. In Scorcher (1987),
Carver has been living with Edwina, a real estate agent
who is unpredictable and demanding. His former wife
lives in St. Louis (scene of the Alo NUDGER novels) with
their children, Ann, six, and Chipper, eight. When they
come to visit Florida, a serial killer with a flamethrower
made from a scuba tank incinerates Chipper. In Bloodfire
(1991), a man named Ghostly hires Carver to find his
missing wife. He pays with a thousand-dollar bill, and
does not seem to be quite what he says he is. Like other
books in the series, Bloodfire contains extremely violent
scenes; Carver is in the same room with a woman when
she is shot in the head with a .30-06 rifle. In this book, he
meets Beth Jackson, a black woman who later becomes
his girlfriend. He moves back to his beach cottage in Del
Moray, twenty miles from Orlando. Beth becomes a
reporter for an alternative newspaper, and also becomes
Carver's de facto partner.