Bill Pronzini
From AwardAnnals
Information about the author.
Works
- 8 works
- Show titles only
Bill Pronzini
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.
Boobytrap: A “Nameless Detective” Novel
Bill Pronzini
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.
Bill Pronzini
1001 Midnights: The Aficionado's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction
Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller
Mystery readers everywhere will dellight in this compendium of their favorite literature.
The Crimes of Jordan Wise: A Novel
Bill Pronzini
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.
Sentinels: A “Nameless Detective” Novel
Bill Pronzini
Led by circumstances to accept the kind of case he dislikes—a “worried mother job”—”Nameless” reluctantly agrees to investigate the strange disappearance of college student Allison McDowell and her mysterious new boyfriend while on a driving strip from Oregon to San Francisco. The young couple vanished suddenly and without a trace after their car broke down and they were forced to spend a night in the tiny village of Creekside, in the remote Northwestern corner of California.
When “Nameless” travels to Creekside and begins to question the locals, he encounters apparent apathy, hostility, and mounting evidence that suggests the couple may have met with foul play. Is one or more of the inhabitants of Creekside responsible? Is it Allison’s boyfriend, whose identity is unknown even to her mother? Or is it forces of a far more sinister nature?
“Nameless’s” search takes him to Eugene, Oregon and then back to the Northern California wilderness. And it leads him from what seems to be a simple disappearance to a complex conspiracy of evil, one which reaches far beyond this remote backwater and threatens to destroy him as well before he can expose the truth.
Bill Pronzini
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.- 8 works
- Show titles only
