Bill Pronzini

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,...

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

...

Give-a-Damn Jones, an itinerant typographer, arrives in the small Montana town of Box Elder. The town is rife with tensions related to a convict's efforts to prove his innocence, a cattleman's demand for respect, a snooping editor, and a feud between a dentist and a blacksmith. Jones keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time-- but this time, he may be the hero that this town needs.

"Cody Hatcher is the kind of teenager you don't want your kids hanging 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's, is also being harassed by vindictive townspeople. It's against such odds that he must work to prove Cody innocent. There are few to help him and plenty to get in his way. It's a classic situation...

"Nameless" had seen enough death in his years; spending his time watching someone drive to several funerals a day, funerals for people he didn't know, was more than he could take. And he had a non-professional problem of his own: his relationship with his wife, Kerry, had hit a wall, and nothing he did got him over it and to the other side. There was one possibility, one thing he'd done (or not done), but knowing that didn't seem to help. Also not...

"Despite the fact that his wedding is right around the corner, John Quincannon takes on what may be his riskiest assignment: going undercover into a gold mine to ferret out a gang hijacking high-grade ore before it reaches the surface ... John discovers the clever methods by which the scheme is being worked and exposes the conspirators ... following him leads to an unexpected rendezvous with Sabina, who has uncovered vital information about the thief's...

When the Coastline Killer, a vigilante who's been targeting random victims because they don't respect the environment, claims another victim, the local police consider Jay Macklin--a tourist staying at a remote northern California cottage with his paramedic wife--a suspect.

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...

In the quiet town of Peaceful Valley, Montana, Sheriff Lucas Monk must deal with an unexpected crime wave, which is ignited by the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian.

Nameless may not like David Virden, but the case is simple enough: find his ex-wife, and they know where she is. Deliver some papers to her and it is is all done. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and slams the door. His colleague, Tamara, tells Nameless that Virden threatens to sue, stops payment on his checks, and claims that the woman they located is not his wife. Then he disappears and his fiancee...