Showing results by author "Bill Pronzini" in All Categories

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.

A double dose of Western action from one of the genre's acknowledged masters. The first story, "The Rodeo Killer", is a smoldering tale of the violent intersecting conflict between New Mexico cattle ranchers, cattle buyers, and men breeding horses for the rodeo circuit. The title story, "Mission Creek", tells the fiery tale of Ruel Starrett, a man who worked against the odds his whole life to establish his own ranch. He finally gets his chance when he's offered a half interest in the Spade Ranch from a woman named Susanna Dahlhart. But she isn't all she appears.

Big, sort-of-sloppy, brew-loving P.I. opens up his files on some of his most fascinating cases. Here are 10 stories and two novelettes, giving Nameless fans a page-turning potpourri of his toughest and most dangerous adventures. Case File is a 12-pack to be popped open and enjoyed on an off-duty afternoon. So sit back and spend some time with one of America's favorite P.I.'s who has caught more criminals - an imaginations - than any other gumshoe in recent American fiction.

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.

An empty train yard at midnight...a small cabin bathed in the light of a full moon...a seedy Skid Row hotel in San Francisco....These are the places where fear lives, where the chill in the air has nothing to do with the temperature, and where Death can be someone you've already met. Collected here for the first time are twenty-six terrifying stories by Bill Pronzini, a master of dark suspense and horror. These chilling stories span nearly three decades in his award-winning career, and most have never been published in book form.

Two novellas and two short stories featuring Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Bill Pronzini's iconic Nameless Detective. Zigzag is an original novella in which a safe and simple accident investigation becomes the unraveling of a twisted murder scheme.

Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that's just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it. Aside from the occasional drunken brawl or minor disturbance out on the reservation, he hasn't had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years. That is, until mid-October, 1914, when the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. Teenager Charity Axthelm goes missing, Reba Purvis' housekeeper is poisoned with cyanide Reba is sure was meant for her, and Lucas' gut tells him that this is only the beginning.

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.

Nameless had told Mitchell Krochek he'd do whatever he could to find his missing wife, Janice. She'd run away before - propelled by a gambling fever that grew ever higher - and Mitch had always taken her back. This time, when Nameless, his partner, Tamara, and the agency's chief operative, Jake Runyon, finally found her in a sleazy San Francisco hotel, she demanded a divorce. A few days later, a beaten and bloody Janice stumbled into the agency begging to go home. No one is surprised when, soon after her homecoming, she disappears again.

Things were quiet in Nameless' San Francisco agency, and his partner, Tamara, was itching to get back to work. A deadbeat father needed to be found, and Tamara needed to do some fieldwork, so she took off for his last known address. When Tamara goes missing, Nameless feels a sinking in his gut: A few years ago he had been kidnapped and left to die in a cabin in the woods, and something about Tamara's disappearance echoes too loudly.

Young, newly rich Verity Daniels claims to be receiving threatening demands for money from a mysterious caller. When Jake Runyon agrees to investigate, it seems a relatively simple matter to expose the extortionist by setting a trap for him. The case, however, is nowhere near as clear-cut as it first appears. And Verity Daniels is nowhere near the helpless victim she pretends to be. A series of surprise revelations culminates in Runyon being falsely accused of a crime that never happened.

The police said it was an accident. The dead woman's sister said it was murder...and that she knew who did it. Nameless isn't certain, but the more he learns about Nancy Mathias' life, the more inclined he is to accept the possibility that her sister is right. Combine that with the situation Jake Runyan, one of the agency's partners, is facing as he searches for a young man who is either a murderer or a victim, and life at their San Francisco detective agency has everyone on edge.

More Oddments features 14 more detective stories featuring characters such as Fergus O'Hara and the "Nameless" Detective. The stories included in this collection are: "Fergus O'Hara, Detective", "Chip", "Opportunity", "A Craving for Originality", "One of Those Cases (A "Nameless Detective" Story)", "I Didn't Do It", "Quicker Than the Eye (with Michael Kurland)", "Angel of Mercy", "Connoisseur", "Mrs. Rakubian", "Smuggler's Island", "A Taste of Paradise", "Under the Skin", and "Prose Bowl (with Barry N. Malzberg)".

In a remote spot, Hannigan is burying a body he claims is his dog. A man suddenly emerges from the fog, asking if he can call for help, since he had to quickly escape a nearby house from a jealous husband. The district is tense, since the news warns of an escaped lunatic killer from a mental hospital is on the loose. The two men return to Hannigan’s house and unexpectedly meet a third man in the fog, claiming to be a policeman, whose car broke down. Is one of them the escaped lunatic killer?

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 his wife finally left him and filed for divorce, Rick Fallon put his house up for sale and took the last two weeks of his vacation. Then he loaded his Jeep and drove straight to Death Valley, the one place he truly belongs. On his third day in Death Valley, Fallon comes upon a deserted car, and soon thereafter, the almost-dead body of Casey Dunbar. After rescuing her, Fallon soon learns what had driven her to give up on life and - his own life on hold - he resolves to unravel the twisted and dangerous strands of hers.

Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren't all heroes. Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He's a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything -or anyone - could be the fuse to ignite them.

Jordan Wise was an ordinary, unexciting accountant with a San Francisco engineering firm, insecure about his future - until he met Annalise Bonner. She only cared for adventure and the good life and, intoxicated by her, Jordan Wise resolved to get it for both of them. Drawing on his considerable bookkeeping skills, he embezzled half a million dollars of his company's money and arranged the perfect escape for him and Annalise. However, he couldn't control what happened next...

A "botched" hit and blackmail turn to revenge and betrayal in this gripping mystery by a master mystery writer.

Fresh from his recent marriage, the Nameless Detective returns to what appears to be a routine investigation, an adoption case. While searching through the effects of her recently deceased mother, 23-year-old Melanie Ann Aldrich discovers some papers that show she was adopted. With her father dead as well, it seems unlikely she will ever find out why she was never told. So she hires Nameless to find her true parents.