Showing results by author "Bill Pronzini" in All Categories

The Nameless Detective is hired by a young wife to find out whether her husband has been having an affair. He trails the husband to a motel of cabins in a small village, sees him meet with a bald man, and then return to his cabin. Hours later, Nameless realizes the cabin may have a backdoor; he investigates and finds the husband has been murdered!

His name was Roy Sands, and he had everything to look forward to. He was getting out of the service and coming home to marry his beautiful fiancée. He had his debts paid, money in the bank, and a happy new life ahead of him. Then he disappeared.

For the Nameless Detective, investigations involving matters of the heart are to be avoided at all costs. When an old poker buddy asks him to help frazzled and distraught Kay Runyon, whose husband, Victor, is having a clandestine affair with a mystery woman named Nedra, Nameless unwillingly relents, but he soon discovers there is much more at stake than a simple affair.

Few characters have the loyal readership of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective." The 14 stories in this collection span his entire 35-year life on the printed page. They include "It's a Lousy World," where Nameless proves that a friend did not commit the crime he was accused of; "Dead Man's Slough" and "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch," which take him out of San Francisco into the hinterlands; and "Souls Burning," where he tries to help an old friend make one last try at setting things right.

For each of the detectives at the agency, a betrayal becomes not only the driving force behind an investigation, but the source of the kind of resolve that cannot be derailed by threats. Tamara's case began as something personal explodes as an investigation of her former lover leads to a scam that bilks charities. For Nameless, trying to find out who is gaslighting an old woman only exposes the ugly side of family. We're told that there are seven deadly sins; not on the list is the deadliest of them all: betrayal.

So what if Nameless can't get his girlfriend, Kerry, to marry him? So what if he can't talk his partner, Eberhardt, out of his bitter funk? Skies are sunny, and the Nameless Detective wants them to stay that way. So he decides to do an old man a favor and find his missing granddaughter, Gianna. But no one said it would be easy. It seems Gianna's roommate is turning tricks, and Nameless' search quickly leads him to a pimp, a murder, and into a dark pit of human perversion.

Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops… just another day for Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.

Nameless wasn't supposed to come into the office on Mondays; he wasn't supposed to answer the phone. On this Monday, he did both. The call was from Barney Rivera - once a friend, now despised - at Great Western Insurance. Against his better judgment, Nameless agreed to meet with him.

The investigation was relatively simple: a multimillionaire rare books collector had reported the theft of eight volumes, worth a half million dollars. From a locked library. To which he has the only key.

When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist's first demand, but the order to pay another $5,000 is too much to face. The banker's real problem is something he doesn't want to reveal.

Bill, the “Nameless Detective”, and his wife, Kerry, were in the Sierra foothills, just outside of Six Pines, falling in love with a cabin. It was all perfect, until Kerry went missing. They’d seen Balfour at breakfast at the diner and Kerry remembered his name… PR people are like that. Which was unfortunate, because when she ran into him along the trail on that sunny afternoon and called him by name, he panicked. And that’s when Bill’s nightmare began.

Cody Hatcher is the kind of teenager you don't want your kids hanging out with. That's the book on him, and it's why the citizens of Mineral Springs have no problem at all believing that he's guilty of three rapes. His mother, Cheryl, an old lover of Nameless, is being harassed by vindictive townspeople. It's against such odds that Nameless must work to prove Cody innocent. There are few to help him and plenty to get in his way. It's a classic situation for an iconic private investigator.