Michael Allegretto

1944

Florida, United States

Michael Allegretto worked as a draftsman, surveyor, librarian, and bus driver. In 1987, he published his first novel "Take care of little girls" ("Death on the Rocks"). This is the beginning of a series of five novels devoted to private detective Jacob Lomax. A former police officer in Colorado, he left the police after the murder of his wife. For this novel, Michael Allegretto received in 1988 the Shamus prize for best first novel and was nominated in the same category for the Anthony prize. Another of his novels, "Night of Reunion" was adapted into a TV movie in 1995 under the title "Terror in the Shadows" by William A. Graham. Allegretto described his non-series fiction as “criminous, but as different from Lomax as I can make it: psychological suspense involving ordinary people forced into extraordinarily dangerous situations.” Allegretto’s own father was a detective with the Denver Police Department, and Allegretto’s character Lomax investigates crime in and around Denver, utilizing the diverse settings of the area — mountains, city, and suburbs. Richard G. La Porte wrote in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers that Jacob Lomax is “more than the run-of-the-mill cop turned private eye.” La Porte called Lomax “the decade’s white- hatted shamus, as up-to-date as a news release.” In "Blood Stone" Lomax becomes involved with a jewel robbery that occurred twenty years earlier. The stone referred to in the title is a ruby set in a diamond necklace which was part of a cache of stolen jewelry worth several million dollars. The missing cache is the object of interest of all the characters, in a narrative that is “tersely told,” as Charles Shibuk wrote in the Armchair Detective. “You can’t beat a good private eye, I always say, and Michael Allegretto has a terrific one in Jacob Lomax,” wrote Phil Vettel in his review of Blood Stone for Chicago Tribune Books. In "Grave Doubt", Lomax works for a woman whose first husband was killed in a plane crash while traveling for his employer, a televangelist. Several years after his apparent death, the victim seems to have surfaced, demanding that his wife hand over the money from his life insurance policy and threatening to take their daughter if she does not comply. Lomax is threatened by mob types as he gets closer to the mob/church connection. In addition to the Lomax series, Allegretto has written a number of stand-alone novels. In the psychological thriller "Night of the Reunion", Alex Whitaker’s family has been murdered by his former lover, Christine Helstrum. Escaping from a mental hospital, Christine returns to Colorado to hide in the basement of the home of Whitaker and his new family with a plan to taunt and terrorize them. “Christine’s mischief into murderous violence makes for a suspenseful thriller,” wrote A. M. B. Amantia, a contributor to Library Journal. "The Suitor" is the story of obsession, a “pale, ho-hum variation on Fatal Attraction," wrote a critic for Kirkus Reviews. In "Shadow House" Nora Honeycut travels to Colorado when her sister Annie dies after falling from the roof of a mansion. Annie meets her fate while photographing the house for an assignment involving sites of old scandals and crimes, and Nora finds among the photos on her sister’s final roll of film an indication that the death was more than accidental. Teaming up with her dead sister’s fiancee, Nora pursues her sister’s murderer without police assistance.

Michael Allegretto Edit Profile

author

Background

Michael Allegretto was born in 1944 in Florida, United States. Raised in Colorado, Allegretto spent his youth listening to the stories of his father, a Denver police officer whose experiences he later used as the basis for his first books.

Education

Michael studied at the University of Denver in 1963, at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1970, and again in Denver in 1972.

Career

Michael Allegretto worked as a draftsman, surveyor, librarian, and bus driver. In 1987, he published his first novel "Take care of little girls" ("Death on the Rocks"). This is the beginning of a series of five novels devoted to private detective Jacob Lomax. A former police officer in Colorado, he left the police after the murder of his wife. For this novel, Michael Allegretto received in 1988 the Shamus prize for best first novel and was nominated in the same category for the Anthony prize. Another of his novels, "Night of Reunion" was adapted into a TV movie in 1995 under the title "Terror in the Shadows" by William A. Graham.

Allegretto described his non-series fiction as “criminous, but as different from Lomax as I can make it: psychological suspense involving ordinary people forced into extraordinarily dangerous situations.” Allegretto’s own father was a detective with the Denver Police Department, and Allegretto’s character Lomax investigates crime in and around Denver, utilizing the diverse settings of the area — mountains, city, and suburbs. Richard G. La Porte wrote in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers that Jacob Lomax is “more than the run-of-the-mill cop turned private eye.” La Porte called Lomax “the decade’s white- hatted shamus, as up-to-date as a news release.”

In "Blood Stone" Lomax becomes involved with a jewel robbery that occurred twenty years earlier. The stone referred to in the title is a ruby set in a diamond necklace which was part of a cache of stolen jewelry worth several million dollars. The missing cache is the object of interest of all the characters, in a narrative that is “tersely told,” as Charles Shibuk wrote in the Armchair Detective. “You can’t beat a good private eye, I always say, and Michael Allegretto has a terrific one in Jacob Lomax,” wrote Phil Vettel in his review of Blood Stone for Chicago Tribune Books.

In "Grave Doubt", Lomax works for a woman whose first husband was killed in a plane crash while traveling for his employer, a televangelist. Several years after his apparent death, the victim seems to have surfaced, demanding that his wife hand over the money from his life insurance policy and threatening to take their daughter if she does not comply. Lomax is threatened by mob types as he gets closer to the mob/church connection.

In addition to the Lomax series, Allegretto has written a number of stand-alone novels. In the psychological thriller "Night of the Reunion", Alex Whitaker’s family has been murdered by his former lover, Christine Helstrum. Escaping from a mental hospital, Christine returns to Colorado to hide in the basement of the home of Whitaker and his new family with a plan to taunt and terrorize them. “Christine’s mischief into murderous violence makes for a suspenseful thriller,” wrote A. M. B. Amantia, a contributor to Library Journal.

"The Suitor" is the story of obsession, a “pale, ho-hum variation on Fatal Attraction," wrote a critic for Kirkus Reviews. In "Shadow House" Nora Honeycut travels to Colorado when her sister Annie dies after falling from the roof of a mansion. Annie meets her fate while photographing the house for an assignment involving sites of old scandals and crimes, and Nora finds among the photos on her sister’s final roll of film an indication that the death was more than accidental. Teaming up with her dead sister’s fiancee, Nora pursues her sister’s murderer without police assistance.