Nameless Series by Bill Pronzini
Nameless #1
The Snatch
Bill Pronzini
In his first chronicled adventure,the NAMELESS DETECTIVE hires on to handle the ransom payoff in a kidnapping case. Financier Louis Martinetti doesn't trust the police to deal with the man who snatched his 9-year-old son from his military prep school, nor is it clear that he trusts the members of his own household. On the apointed evening, NAMELESS takes a briefcase that contains $300,000 in cash to a secluded loaction chosen by the kidnapper. Then all hell breaks loose.**
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Nameless #24
Illusions
Bill Pronzini
In his 24th and most intriguing appearance, the "Nameless
Detective" finds himself involved in two intricate and emotional investigations.
The first is intensely personal: the unexpected death of his estranged friend
and former partner, Eberhardt. Although there seems to be no question that
Eberhardt committed suicide, "Nameless" becomes obsessed with the reasons behind
the act. "A man doesn't just all of a sudden trade living for dying. Something
prods him across the line between thinking about it and actually doing it. Every
suicide, every homicide has its trigger. What was Eberhardt's?"
Meanwhile, he is hired by a Santa Fe businessman to find
his ex-wife, who disappeared three years earlier. Locating the woman turns out
to be fairly simple; she is living and working in the northern California wine
country. But just when the case seems finished, it takes on bizarre dimensions-a
fatal shooting that may or may not be accidental, hidden motives, and a web of
lies and deception. "Nameless" is compelled to continue his investigation when
it becomes clear he is partly, if inadvertently, responsible for the victim's
death.
The keys to both cases lie in illusions-those people
create about themselves and those they perceive in others. Additional
similarities also emerge, leading "Nameless" to a series of startling
revelations and ultimately to the two most difficult decisions of his
career.
Both a fair-play detective story and a novel of
psychological and moral complexity, Illusions is another triumph for the
sleuth praised by the Chicago Sun-Times as "the thinking person's
detective." It is also further proof that Bill Pronzini is "an exceptionally
skilled writer working at the top of his ability" (Denver Post) and an
innovator in the field of crime fiction.
***
From Booklist
Santa Fe businessman Ira Erskine hires San Francisco
private eye Nameless to find his missing ex-wife, Janice, who may have relocated
to the Bay Area. Erskine wants to offer Janice one last chance to see her only
child, who is dying of leukemia. Nameless accepts the case, partially to get his
mind off the suicide of his ex-partner and ex-best friend, Eberhardt. Within
days after Nameless finds the missing woman, Erskine is found dead in a hotel
room near his ex-wife's new home. While that nightmare is unfolding, Nameless
tries to understand why Eb took his own life. Perhaps it wasn't suicide after
all. As the cases progress, they parallel one another with an eerie similarity
that forces Nameless to reexamine his previously unshakable moral certitude and
self-proclaimed position as a sentinel of black-and-white justice. The Nameless
series is 26 entries and almost 30 years old, and Nameless himself is edging
toward 60. The sheer duration of the series, as well as its increasing depth and
the steady maturation of Nameless-both chronologically and emotionally-represent
a stunning and unique achievement in crime fiction. The series, the character,
and this book are not to be missed. Nameless has become an American
treasure.
***
From Kirkus Reviews
Think the death of the Nameless Detective's
(Sentinels, 1996, etc.) embittered ex-partner Eberhardt will finally
close the book on the bad blood between the two? You don't know brooding
Nameless, who, seeing Eberhardt's pathological moodiness as the mirror of his
own, won't rest till he knows exactly what happened to make Eberhardt shoot
himself in the chest. But soon his sorrowing investigation into Eberhardt's last
assignment, a series of inside-job thefts from a pair of loutish liquor
distributors, gets interrupted by a new assignment of his own: finding the
ex-wife of Santa Fe financial consultant Ira Erskine, armed only with a postcard
to a female friend saying that she's in the Bay Area and desperate to find the
woman who left him and their hometown four years ago before their son dies of
leukemia. So Nameless, continuing his exhaustive tour of northern California,
heads out to the wine country in Alexander Valley and finds Janice Erskine just
in time for his client to get shot as dead as his ex-partner. You can't help
thinking the two cases will have something to do with each other, and so they
do, but not at all in the way you expect. Characteristically overblown but solid
midgrade work from Nameless, even if the old guy (now pushing 60) is awfully
full of illusions for a veteran of 23 earlier cases.
***
"The 'Nameless' novels are exciting, mysterious,
beautifully rendered, and filled with humor about the vagaries of life in
California. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that all first-rate writers are
moralists. Pronzini aims to tell us about himself and his times, and thus
'Nameless' is a bit of a secular priest."
-Ed Gorman
"Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're
living those explosive days of terror."
-Robert Ludlum
"The 'Nameless Detective' is a classic private-eye
hero."
-Chicago Sun-Times
"Once in a crocodile's age you come across a writer whose
work you instinctively like. I've found one-Bill Pronzini."
-Los Angeles Times
"One of the best in the mystery-suspense field is Bill
Pronzini."
-Washington Post
"An exceptionally skilled writer working at the top of
his ability."
-Denver Post
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Nameless #39
Kinsmen
Bill Pronzini
Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of
Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the
tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went
missing without a trace.
Whatever happened, it felt like something bad to the
Nameless Detective. Five days without a whisper of contact with the outside
world. Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the
harmless.
Kinsmen takes Bill Pronzini's classic private
investigator to California's northeast backwoods, where an isolated community is
determined to keep a deep, dark secret: why Allison Shay and Rob Compton really
vanished.
The real question facing the Nameless Detective: are they
still alive?
Cemetery Dance, 2013. Hardcover, 185 pp.
***
From Kirkus Reviews (on Sentinels
(1996))
Though the publisher maintains a demure silence on the
point, this short novel is a lightly revised expansion of Pronzini's novella
"Kinsmen", first published, together with long stories by Marcia Muller and Ed
Gorman, in Criminal Intent 1 (1993). Here as there, the Nameless
Detective (Hardcase, 1995, etc.) is on the trail of a missing University
of Oregon student who vanished, together with the boyfriend she planned to bring
home to her mother outside Oakland, shortly after their car broke down in that
slice of God's country designated Creekside, Calif., pop. 112. Even readers new
to the material should be able to guess what happened to Allison McDowell and
her lover by the halfway point. Those with memories of "Kinsmen" will find more
words here, but not much else that's new.
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Nameless #40
Femme
Bill Pronzini
Femme fatale. French for “deadly woman.”
You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection
with noir fiction and film noir. But they're not just products of literature or
film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too.
The gnuine femme fatales you har about now and then are every bit as evil as the
fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they're the failures, the
ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there
must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes…
In the thirty years the Nameless Detective has been a
private investigator, he has never once had the misfortune to cross paths with
this type of seductress… but in Femme he'll meet Cory Beckett, a deadly
woman who has brought some new angles to the species. New-and terrible.
Cemetery Dance, 2012. Hardcover, 175 pp.
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