Brent Lutz is a police sergeant in Woodstock, Virginia, who teams up with Bill Metcalf to investigate a heroin ring that is running drugs from Harlem down Interstate 81 to Woodstock. The chief suspect is a mysterious man known at first only as D.C., later revealed to be Ronnie Jones. Lutz’s dedication to tracking D.C. and ending the heroin ring begins to take over his life, causing him to work on holidays. It turns into his own version of addiction. Ultimately, Lutz is successful in tracking down and arresting Ronnie Jones, but this does little to stem the opioid epidemic in Woodstock, particularly after fentanyl begins making its way into the region, leading to even more overdose deaths.
Brent Lutz Quotes in Dopesick
The Dopesick quotes below are all either spoken by Brent Lutz or refer to Brent Lutz. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Back Bay Books edition of Dopesick published in 2018.
Chapter 7
Quotes
In the picturesque Shenandoah Valley town of Woodstock, more than two hours north of Roanoke, bulk heroin cut in a Harlem lab had just made its way down I-81. It was the last thing Shenandoah County sergeant Brent Lutz, a Woodstock native, would have expected to find himself doing: stalking a major heroin dealer. But here he was, at all hours of the day and night, clutching a pair of binoculars while crouched in the upstairs bedroom of his cousin’s house a few miles outside of town. He’d spent so much time there in recent days that the mile-wide stench of chicken entrails coming from George’s Chicken across the road no longer bothered him.
Related Characters:
Brent Lutz, Ronnie “D.C.” Jones
Related Symbols:
Interstate 81
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Brent Lutz Character Timeline in Dopesick
The timeline below shows where the character Brent Lutz appears in Dopesick. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7
...big shipment of heroin has just arrived on Interstate 81 from Harlem. Local sergeant Brent Lutz is investigating it, tracking the movements of two suspected low-level dealers. Lutz receives lots of...
(full context)
In late 2012, Lutz (then age 30) becomes the lead narcotics investigator in Woodstock. Though he was working in...
(full context)
By spring 2013, Lutz has not yet learned the real name of the supplier nicknamed D.C. He has, however,...
(full context)
Lutz’s work begins to take over his life—he is on his phone at weddings and out...
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Late in March 2013, Lutz gets a new clue about D.C. A routine traffic stop catches Devon Gray, who is...
(full context)
Chapter 8
...in detail. By that time, Jones already knows that the police are on to him. Lutz and other officers had already come to one of Jones’s apartments in Woodstock, only to...
(full context)
At the raid of Jones’s apartment, although Jones has fled, Lutz and the other officers arrest Marie, a user-dealer associated with Jones who is there with...
(full context)
...the bathroom with a needle in his arm. Dennis calls 911, but by the time Lutz arrives (two to six hours later), Jesse is dead. Kristi suspects that Dennis is lying...
(full context)