For the "Nameless Detective," investigations involving matters of the heart are to be avoided. But 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 relents. After all, it seems like a simple matter: Find out just who Nedra is so Kay can confront her in a last-ditch effort to save her marriage.     But Nameless soon discovers that there is much more at stake than a simple affair. Nedra is a modern-day Circe who attracts men who become obsessed with her, in some cases dangerously so. Victor Runyon is the latest in a long line; others whose paths Nameless crosses include a violent ex-convict, Nedra's jealous ex-husband, and a powerful San Francisco politician.     Victor's obsession with Nedra takes a bizarre twist when she suddenly vanishes without a trace. Did she disappear willingly or was she the victim of one of her lovers' private demons? Nameless must find out before it's too late to save Victor and Kay from tragic ends. And he do so while trying to cope with a very personal and private demon of his own.     Demons is a powerful tale of psychological suspense that builds inexorably to a chilling and shocking climax.

    Two mysteries by Bill Pronzini with the introductions by Marcia Muller and Robert J. Randisi…          SNOWBOUND…          "A stinger and a beaut. Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror."     -Robert Ludlum          "A shivery, spine-tingling, it-could-happen suspense story."     -Publishers Weekly          "Packed with adventure, fresh characterization and minute-by-minute suspense."     -Chicago Tribune          When the Sacramento heist turns sour, the three gunmen head for the Sierra Nevada mountains to the safe house they had set up for themselves in the small village of Hidden Valley. There is a storm approaching and the residents there are preparing for Christmas. None of them have any idea of the killers in their midst. Rebecca Hughes is too busy dealing with her faithless husband. John Tribucci and his wife Ann are getting ready for the birth of their first child. And all Zachary Cain wants to do is drink himself into forgetfulness over the death of his family. None of them are prepared for three desperate men who decide to pull the ultimate heist-and hold an entire town hostage!          GAMES…          "Pronzini is a kind of magician, only he builds his illusions, casts his spells and creates his magic with words…the people are real, the psychology is sound and the situation so inherently spellbinding that readers will be swept effortlessly along by the narrative."     -Seattle Post Intelligencer          "Full of terrifying, spine-tingling moments."     -Tallahassee Democrat          "Amoral; chilling."     -Cleveland Plain Dealer          Senator David Jackman needed to get away for the weekend, and he had just the spot in mind-the family island, a secluded spot off the coast of Maine. And he had just the person in mind to join him-his free-spirited mistress, Tracy. But once they arrive, nothing seems right. All the guns are missing from the house. They find a couple of dead animals, ritualistically slaughtered. Then their boat is stolen. Soon, suspicion turns to terror as David and Tracy are stalked by two deadly and possibly deranged adversaries. The Old Man had always told David that life is a game, but if that is the case, this could be the biggest game of all-and the final one!

MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini debuts a thrilling western with expert storytelling and a mysterious hero who will appeal to Pronzini's Nameless fans.Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren't all heroes.Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He's a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.That's what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything (or anyone) could be the fuse to ignite them: a recently released convict trying to prove his innocence, a prominent cattleman who craves respect at any cost, a wily fraveling dentist at odds with a violent local blacksmith, or a firebrand of an editor who is determined to unlock the town's secrets.Jones walks into the middle of it all, and this time, he may be the hero that this town...

    Femme fatale. French for “deadly woman.”     You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. But they're not just products of literature or film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too. The gnuine femme fatales you har about now and then are every bit as evil as the fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they're the failures, the ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes…     In the thirty years the Nameless Detective has been a private investigator, he has never once had the misfortune to cross paths with this type of seductress… but in Femme he'll meet Cory Beckett, a deadly woman who has brought some new angles to the species. New-and terrible.     Cemetery Dance, 2012. Hardcover, 175 pp.

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 eventually they bring the Nameless Detective to the small California town that drove the nameless victim tragically to murder and madness.

"The bitterest of woes is to remember old happy days." At least that's what old man Pietro Lombardi thinks. He's got la miseria and can't even play a peaceful round of Sunday bocce with his friends at Aquatic Park. That is, until he sees the "Nameless Detective" at an opposite bench—another romantic taking in what's left of the Italian-American essence of the neighborhood. A shared burden being a lesser load, Pietro enlists his paesan's help with a troubling family matter. It seems his granddaughter, Gianna, is being harassed and needs some looking after. For old time's sake, Nameless agrees to check things out. Nameless quickly finds that Gianna is in hotter water than Pietro can imagine. The smarmy landlord who was hassling her is now black-and-blue and apologetic, her roommate is a little more than friendly in a very cheap sort of way, and Gianna is nowhere to be found. Even though his instincts tell him to leave well enough alone, Nameless searches for Pietro's "beauty of beauties" in the muck of a lascivious underworld full of loudmouthed liars, sleazy pornographers, and cold-blooded killers. After uncovering the horrific truth about Gianna, Nameless is far out of his depth. His investigative tracks have been spotted and leave him vulnerable to the wrath of Gianna's tormentors. Not only is Nameless a witness to the seedy behavior of the group, he has been reeled into a trap. In the end it's all Nameless can do to ensure that his epitaph will not be among those that are popping up around him.

    Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went missing without a trace.     Whatever happened, it felt like something bad to the Nameless Detective. Five days without a whisper of contact with the outside world. Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the harmless.     Kinsmen takes Bill Pronzini's classic private investigator to California's northeast backwoods, where an isolated community is determined to keep a deep, dark secret: why Allison Shay and Rob Compton really vanished.     The real question facing the Nameless Detective: are they still alive?     Cemetery Dance, 2013. Hardcover, 185 pp.      ***          From Kirkus Reviews (on Sentinels (1996))     Though the publisher maintains a demure silence on the point, this short novel is a lightly revised expansion of Pronzini's novella "Kinsmen", first published, together with long stories by Marcia Muller and Ed Gorman, in Criminal Intent 1 (1993). Here as there, the Nameless Detective (Hardcase, 1995, etc.) is on the trail of a missing University of Oregon student who vanished, together with the boyfriend she planned to bring home to her mother outside Oakland, shortly after their car broke down in that slice of God's country designated Creekside, Calif., pop. 112. Even readers new to the material should be able to guess what happened to Allison McDowell and her lover by the halfway point. Those with memories of "Kinsmen" will find more words here, but not much else that's new.

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. 

Epub (my conversion)An anthology of twelve Western short stories including "Casey Jones," O. Henry's "The Passing of Black Eagle," Wayne D. Overholser's "Steel to the West," Giles A. Lutz's "Westward Rails," John Jakes' "Hell on the High Iron," and others

Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini's next historical mystery The Paradise Affair, perfect for fans of Peaky Blinders and The Alienist.The latest Carpenter & Quincannon mystery: "Attractive characters, a finely tuned plot, and fascinating snippets of California history. Who could ask for more?"—Publishers Weekly 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 involved in a locked room/dying message murder in Honolulu.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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.

The "nameless" San Francisco detective and his partner Eberhardt are trying to prove that their client Thomas Lujack did not mow down his business partner with his car. Although he suspects his client's guilt early on, the 58-year-old gumshoe spends three weeks looking for flaws in the testimony of the hit-and-run's sole witness. Then Lujack is found murdered, the witness disappears, and the detective, instead of being asked to step up his investigation, is discharged by the victim's brother Coleman. In full moral outrage, the veteran detective bulldogs his way through the case, uncovering evidence about the brothers' employment of illegal immigrants.

30 CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES GOOD TO THE LAST LINE The McGuffin has long been a staple tool in any crime and mystery writer’s arsenal. A perfectly placed last line of a short story can pull together subtle plot threads into a devastating dénouement or give everything that came before it a brand-new meaning, sometimes even reshaping the story entirely for the reader. Joe Gores and Bill Pronzini, two of the most talented mystery writers of the 20th century, joined forces to assemble the very best McGuffin stories by such celebrated authors as Anthony Boucher, Harlan Ellison, Joe L. Hensley, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz, John D. MacDonald, and Donald E. Westlake. They, along with 24 more authors, have created some of the very best mystery stories that often save their best twists for the very last line...