Bill Pronzini
1) Schemers
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Reluctantly agreeing to investigate the theft of a valuable rare book collection, Nameless finds the heist tied to a stalking case involving a pair of brothers who are being hounded by a twisted adversary who has decimated their father's grave.
2) Betrayers
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An investigation of a former lover leads Tamara to a charity-targeting scam, while Nameless's assistance of an elderly woman reveals ugly family agendas and Runyon's search for a bail jumper leads him to make a wrenching choice.
3) Savages
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Investigating the death of a woman that has been ruled accidental by the police but that her sister insists was a murder by a known perpetrator, a reluctant Nameless begins to suspect that the victim's sister is telling the truth when he learns unsettling facts about her life.
4) Strangers
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Cheryl seeks assistance from Nameless when her son, Cody Hatcher, is accused of three rapes in Mineral Springs.
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Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" detective has become one of the longest-lived, and consistently highly praised, private investigators in the annals of American crime fiction and the award-winning author proves, once again, that his skills are unmatched.
Things were quiet in the San Francisco-based agency Nameless founded and his partners, Jake and Vanessa were itching to get back to work. A deadbeat father needed to be found, and Vanessa needed to do...
6) Bleeders
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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
...8) Hellbox
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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...
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A haunted woman's suicide pulls a California man into the poisonous secrets of a bleak Nevada desert town in Bill Pronzini's masterful work of noir fiction. There is something about the sad woman eating alone night after night at the Harmony Café that intrigues San Francisco CPA Jim Messenger. Unfulfilled himself, Jim feels a kinship with her - and later, when she commits suicide, he resolves to find out why. His search leads him to Beulah, a middle-of-nowhere...
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Carpenter and Quincannon Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. Sabina and John will protect their clients, doing what is necessary to run the dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes that involves brute force. Other times, a more subtle touch is needed. Professor A. Vargas, medium extraordinaire, and his partner, Annabelle, don't use picks to open locked doors, and most certainly don't...
12) Nemesis
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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.
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1914. Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana... and that's just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it. He hasn't had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years. Then the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. Teenager Charity Axthelm goes missing, and Reba Purvis's housekeeper is poisoned with cyanide Reba is sure was meant for her. It's not long before the first corpse shows up, and it's up...
14) Spook
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Shaken after a hair's-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he's not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco's shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but Pronzini, working at the top of his form, takes his seasoned private-eye hero to a new phase of a still-evolving...
15) Hardcase
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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, twenty-three year old Melanie Ann Aldrich discovers some papers which 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.In the course of his...
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"The latest Carpenter & Quincannon mystery: "Attractive characters, a finely tuned plot, and fascinating snippets of California history. Who could ask for more?"-PublishersWeekly on The Stolen Gold Affair Quincannon's pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer's assets dovetails nicely with Sabina's vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently becomes...
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In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, Quincannon goes undercover as a newly-hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible. Meanwhile, Sabina finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon's wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate scam and an abusive young man's villainous secret.
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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,...
20) The violated
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In Echo Park, in the small town of Santa Rita, California, the mutilated body of Martin Torrey is found by two passersby. A registered sex offender, Torrey has been a suspect in a string of recent rapes, and instant suspicion for his murder falls on the relatives and friends of the women attacked. Police chief Griffin Kells and detective Robert Ortiz are under increasing pressure from the public and from a mayor demanding results in a case that has...