Новинки Билла Пронзини

50 рассказов, ранее печатавшихся в журнале «Если».

A weekend fling turns into a week-long manhunt as the Nameless Detective's last solo case involves him in a cat and mouse chase through San Francisco's Japantown that ends in a confusion of murder, rape, and suicide. It is Friday, and on Monday, Nameless will grudgingly welcome Eberhardt, a retired cop and old friend, into his detective agency. The weekend should give him just enough time to wrap up the little mystery of Haruko Gage's secret admirer who sends her expensive jewels, but doesn't sign his name. With Gage, a domineering designer, as a client, Nameless figures a little light work will bring him a little extra cash. But instead…

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, and he and his employers then become the targets of a vicious legal vendetta. A sudden act of violence turns the case upside down, leading to a much more serious charge against Jake.
With the help of partner Tamara Corbin, Nameless (known as Bill to his associates) puts aside the difficult personal issue that has kept him sidelined at home and works to clear both Runyon's and the agency's good names. The task requires untangling Verity Daniels's bizarre past and present relationships, and before Bill succeeds, he must overcome a deadly threat to his own safety.
Nemesis continues author Bill Pronzini's acclaimed Nameless Detective Series.

It's a lazy mid-August Sunday afternoon. The "Nameless Detective" and his old friend Lieutenant Eberhardt are relaxing on the patio, drinking beer and shooting the breeze, when the doorbell rings. As Eberhardt answers the door, Nameless hears two sharp echoing reports—gunshots; they could only be gunshots. Rushing into the house, Nameless glimpses the bloody body of his friend sprawled on the floor—just before he feels a bullet strike his own chest. While Eberhardt lies in a coma, Nameless is released from the hospital and hits the San Francisco streets, determined to track down the gunman. Facing the toughest case of his career, Nameless doggedly pursues the secret behind his friend's shooting—only to find himself plunged into an action-packed intrigue involving murder, bribery, violence, and the forces of organized crime in San Francisco's Chinatown. The inimitable Nameless Detective, an overweight private eye of Italian descent with a penchant for pulp magazines, is in top form in this gripping, fast-paced tale. "Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror." —Robert Ludlum "Pronzini is a pro." —The New York Times

Business is booming for Nameless; he's started in on three new cases in one week. But every single one of them turns bad some way. In the first, a husband disappears from a car that Nameless has been following. In the second, a woman is mysteriously murdered while Nameless stands outside her bungalow. In the third, a valuable ring disappears from a locked room that Nameless has been guarding. The papers are full of bad publicity. After being at the scene of two homicides, everyone is suspicious of him. He is at risk of losing his PI license. At the same time, he recently proposed to the woman of his dreams and she is becoming more distant from him every day. Scattershot presents more questions than answers in its exciting conclusion. The eighth novel in the Nameless Detective series.

A new Nameless Detective story from the 2008 Mystery Writers of America Grand Master...

A locked room mystery that goes from stolen books to stolen lives and the hunt for a phantom stalker with a penchant for pouring acid to make his point give Nameless and his partner Jake more than enough work to earn their fees—as long as neither turns his back at the wrong moment.

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. The books were all crime fiction and suspense--a locked room mystery about mysteries.

This ordinary Monday brought a second oddball case. The Henderson brothers were being stalked. Someone had dug up the ashes of their late father and poured acid over them, then destroyed the headstone the same way, and left a sign warning that this was just the beginning. Searching for peace of mind and the distraction of work, Jake Runyon is more than happy to bring an end to the brothers' terror.

Jordan Wise is a mild-mannered accountant with a large San Francisco
engineering firm in the late 1970s. By his own admission, the first
thirty-four years of his life were dull, empty. But that all changes
when he meets and falls in love with Annalise Bonner, an ambitious
young woman who craves excitement, a life on the edge.

With her as the catalyst, Wise concocts and executes a meticulous
plan to steal more than half a million dollars from his firm. They
escape to the Virgin Islands, but their plans to live a life of quiet
luxury are beset by unexpected pitfalls -- and Wise is forced to
carry out two more ingenious schemes as a result. All three of his
crimes are perfect -- or are they?

THE CRIMES OF JORDAN WISE is a classic tale of love, greed, betrayal,
and violence told with Bill Pronzini's characteristic twists and
turns and his special brand of suspense. It is also a powerful
psychological examination of a man, a woman, and the wages of sin.

Жители небольшого американского городка охвачены первобытным ужасом: где-то совсем рядом с ними орудует безжалостный и неуловимый маньяк-потрошитель. И путь за его спиной устлан трупами изуродованных женщин. Кто он, этот Потрошитель? Может, ваш тихий и добропорядочный на вид сосед? .Где он объявится в очередной раз? Может, на той тропинке, которой вы будете возвращаться поздней ночью? В романе «Бег зверей» читатели - шаг за шагом - пройдут по следам маньяка и его ловчих, наблюдая за событиями глазами пятерых персонажей и сознавая, что один из них и есть убийца. Но попробуйте разглядеть за внешней обычностью человека его больную психику...…

A "worried mother" job takes "Nameless" to a California backwater, where college student Allison McDowell has disappeared with her mysterious new boyfriend on a drive from Oregon to San Francisco. And behind a simple missing-persons case lies a sinister—and deadly—conspiracy. "'Nameless' is a good man to walk you through the noir landscape."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review "'Nameless' has become an American treasure.... A stunning and unique achievement in crime fiction."—Booklist "One of the best in the mystery-suspense field is Bill Pronzini."—Washington Post

Set in an isolated town in Northern California, A Wasteland of Strangers begins with the arrival of John Faith in Pomo. Who is he? Why has he come here now, during the off-season when there is nothing to do but get into trouble? What is it he wants? Everyone has an opinion of him, and only a few of them are favorable. For everyone he helps, there are two who question his motives, who see danger to themselves and their way of life in his continual presence in their town. And then, when a beautiful, lonely woman is brutally slaughtered after spending time with him, Faith is the prime and logical suspect. Discovering the identity of the killer becomes as important to Faith as to anyone else, except the murderer

Jim Messenger is a CPA who hates his job, loves jazz, and can't forget a woman he has seen eating at the Harmony Café. She goes by the name of Janet Mitchell, and when he introduces himself, her only comment is, "It won't do you any good." When she commits suicide, Messenger is driven to find out why. Her name is only the first of the lies he uncovers. In "historic Beulah," Nevada, secrets coil like rattlesnakes ready to strike, and suffering lies like a suffocating blanket over lives put on hold. Starting with one slender clue, Messenger embarks on a search for the truth that becomes a rite of passage. By the end, lives have been changed, a horrible murder brought to light, and a quiet, little town irrevocably torn apart.

Emotionally exhausted from the events surrounding his partner's suicide, "Nameless" welcomes the chance for a quiet vacation that comes when San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Patrick Dixon proposes that the burnt-out detective drive Dixon's wife and son to their summer cottage on a remote High Sierra lake. In exchange, "Nameless" will have a week's free use of a neighboring cabin. The same week, unknown to both the assistant D.A. and "Nameless, " also among the vacationers at Deep Mountain Lake is a recently paroled explosives expert, Donald Michael Latimer. The timing is not coincidental, for Latimer has meticulously devised a warped plan for revenge against the men who sent him to prison. His viciously ingenious boobytraps have already claimed the lives of two of his intended victims, and at Deep Mountain Lake he has lined up his next three targets: Pat Dixon, Dixon's twelve-year-old son, and "Nameless" himself.

К частному детективу обращается вдова профессионального взломщика, убитого при ограблении магазина. Она уверена, что ее муж не имел никакого отношения к кражам, в которых его обвинили.

The prolific Pronzini not only writes a lot of mysteries (The Nameless Detective series), he obviously reads a lot of them toobut not all of what he reads is good. His 1982 Gun in Cheek was a wickedly humorous collection of unbelievable plots, poor characterization, unlikely language and just plain dumbness in his favorite genre; here he presents another collection, subtitled "an affectionate guide to more of the 'worst' in mystery fiction." Some writers (Harry Stephen Keeler, Michael Avallone) are roasted at length, and some are sideswiped, including even fine writers experiencing temporary lapses (Ed McBain, Joseph Wambaugh). Not perhaps for the general reader, this volume should appeal to addicts who, like Pronzini, will apparently read anything labeled "mystery." Sex, pulp mags, B-movies and "The Alternative Hall of Fame" are featured in wittily titled chapters with a postmortem, bibliography and index.

The Nameless Detective is hired to investigate an accidental death and finds himself caught between greedy land developers and the handful of citizens of an isolated ghost town in northern California.

A routine case turns into a complex mystery for a San Francisco private detective when the man he has been paid to observe is suddenly murdered

Miss Arlene Bradford hires Nameless to find her father. Fired from his government job, Charles Bradford has become a freeloading hobo. It turns out he's inherited a lot of money, and Arlene wants him to have it -- but her sister, Hannah, has some different feelings.

When Nameless hits the tracks to investigate, he discovers something very serious has happened to Bradford, he has disappeared – for good. And when the gruesome facts of this mysterious case come to light, Nameless has got to act quickly before the bodies start piling up like abandoned club cars, and justice gets derailed – permanently.

Bindlestiff is the 10th in the Nameless mystery series (and the definition of the word if like me you didn’t know is hobo.)

I think what I like about this series so much is the back story of our main man, though on occasions in earlier books when Nameless is throwing himself a pity party it’s also what I dislike. Here though he’s on top form.

He’s just got his PI license back after suspension, which will save him having to dispose of too much of his 6000 strong pulp magazine collection to pay the bills. (He’s just sold 1000 to a collector….. ouch!) His best friend, nay only friend – Eberhardt and Nameless are going through a difficult patch with a permanent hangover from facts revealed in our last case – Dragonfire. Eberhardt has left the force and is pressuring Nameless for a job with him. Despite the friendship, Nameless is a solitary man so it’s lose/lose whatever he decides. The romance with Kerry is back on – though there’s a cloud on the horizon with an attractive Chinese journalist (from Dragonfire) pursuing our man for an interview (and possibly more.) Helluva lot going on and we haven’t even got to our case.

Nameless is hired by one sister to find her father, who after losing his job went off riding the rails. The other sister, closer to her father in many ways, but a money-grabber tried to hire him not to look. Bradford has surfaced after a newspaper report and picture on some railway hobos was recently published.

Nameless goes in pursuit and after tracing Bradford’s steps finds himself pursuing a double murderer. Trust in our man to get to the bottom of mystery, which links back to Bradford’s family and events which occurred long ago. A further twist in the mystery occurs later with Nameless himself at risk.

Bindlestiff is the best one I’ve read for a while and was caned in a day over Christmas. Not the most perfect and satisfying murder mystery, there’s a slight suspension of belief as Pronzini tweaks the boundaries of plausibility but hey I was happy to go with it. Some of the best bits were when Nameless took his enquiries to the hobo jungle outside Oroville.

Nameless is called in by his friend, police lieutenant Eberhardt, when a dead woman's purse contains Nameless's business card. Nameless has never met her, and cannot make a connection. Next, Nameless is hired to track and protect a disturbed man, Martin Talbot, who may be harmed by the husband of a woman who died when Talbot's car collided with theirs after Talbot fell asleep at the wheel.

"Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror."
—Robert Ludlum

"Pronzini is the master of the shivery, spine-tingling it-could-happen suspense story."
—Publisher's Weekly

"Pronzini is a pro."
—The New York Times

Former pulp writer and current hack Russell Dancer invites Nameless to the first annual Western Pulp Convention in San Francisco. He wants Nameless to help him locate the person who is trying to blackmail Dancer for a purported plagiarism of a story called "Hoodwink." Arriving at the convention, Nameless discovers that a group of former friends (and now uncomfortable colleagues) who wrote for the pulps called the "Pulpeteers" have all received blackmail notes.

Nameless is in seventh heaven as he meets many of his favorite pulp writers, buys pulp novels for his collection and meets a stunning younger woman who is the daughter of two famous pulp writers. For once, Nameless has some luck with the ladies. But is Kerry Wade attracted to him, or to his job as a private eye? Is he really attracted to her, or to her connection to the pulps?


The convention is unexpectedly disrupted when one of the guests is found dead in a locked room while Russell Dancer is holding a gun that's been recently fired. It looks like an obvious case of murder by Dancer, who has been feuding with the man. Dancer denies his guilt, and only Nameless is willing to believe him. As Nameless tracks down the guilty party, he finds himself faced with a second locked room mystery... and a target for a murderer.