Bill Pronzini

The sunbaked expanse of Death Valley is a great place to visit but a bad place to die in this breathtaking thriller from acclaimed master of suspense fiction Bill Pronzini Rick Fallon has reached the breaking point. His wife left after their son's tragic death, and Rick finds himself without purpose. He seeks out the peace and tranquility of the desert, setting up camp in Death Valley. On his fourth day there, Rick comes across an abandoned car. Inside...

The Nameless Detective has taken many cases over the years, and this is one for the books. Or rather, two cases that will test his agency's resources. Love is in the air... more to the point, love gone awry. One case involves a woman whose husband died accidentally in a remote cabin in the Sierras. The wife isn't buying that her husband was alone, and is determined to find out his secret and get closure, in spite of any potential heartbreak. The other...

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. Nedra is a modern-day Circe who attracts men who become dangerously obsessed with...

With two con games being run by two deadly villains, Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon are forced to split up, but when Sabina's life is in danger, John realizes just how much she means to him. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, is frequently called on to recover money-- and dignity that has been lost to conmen. When one case leaves Sabina Carpenter the only witness to a murder, the family of the culprit vows to stop at...

Nameless had told Mitchell Krochek that 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...

A simple case of blackmail gets lethally complicated when "Nameless" exposes a nasty scam that involves junior accounts executive Jay Cohalan, his unhappy wife, and a mistress with a serious drug problem. It's the kind of case Nameless likes, because bleeders-the blackmailers, extortionists, small-time grifters, and other opportunists who prey on the weak and gullible-sit near the top of his most-worthless-human-beings list. But soon Nameless finds...

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. For Nameless, trying to find out who is gaslighting an old woman only exposes the ugly side of family.

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. Grapplin, which first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, deals with the kind of missing person case that can end in only one of two ways, closure or heartbreak. In the second short,...

When his wife goes missing from their Sierra foothills cabin after spotting a suspicious man, the Nameless Detective and his associate, Jake Runyon, launch a search and rescue mission that stretches legal boundaries.

Agreeing to investigate threats by a mysterious extortionist against a newly rich young woman, Jake Runyon makes a series of surprise discoveries that cause him to be wrongfully accused of a crime and his employers to be subjected to a vicious legal vendetta.