Tough and Other Short Stories

Three John Lutz mysteries in one collection

"Tough"

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 became their biggest mistake.

"High Stakes"

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.

"The Real Shape of the Coast"

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 forty-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.