Few characters have the loyal readership of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective." The fourteen stories in this collection span his entire thirty-five-year life on the printed page. They include "It's a Lousy World," where Nameless proves that a friend did not commit the crime he was accused of; "Dead Man's Slough" and "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch," which take him out of San Francisco into the hinterlands; and "Souls Burning," where he tries

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When his wife goes missing from their Sierra foothills cabin after spotting a suspicious man, the Nameless Detective and his associate, Jake Runyon, launch a search and rescue mission that stretches legal boundaries.

"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...

The Nameless Detective has taken many cases over the years, and this is one for the books. Or rather, two cases that will test his agency's resources. Love is in the air... more to the point, love gone awry. One case involves a woman whose husband died accidentally in a remote cabin in the Sierras. The wife isn't buying that her husband was alone, and is determined to find out his secret and get closure, in spite of any potential heartbreak. The other...

"When Nameless is hired by Cory Beckett, a beautiful young woman who claims to be a model, to find her missing brother, Kenneth, it seems to be a routine matter. Kenneth has fled San Francisco in a drug-induced panic to avoid trial on a charge of stealing a valuable necklace from the alcoholic wife of the man for whom he works, wealthy yachtsman Andrew Vorhees. When agency operative Jake Runyon locates and questions the frightened young man, Cory...

The police said it was an accident, the dead woman's sister said it was murder... and that she knew who did it. Nameless isn't certain, but the more he learns about Nancy Mathias's life, the more inclined he is to accept the likelihood of murder-especially as the players still alive become more and more distasteful. Combine that with the situation Jake Runyon, one of the agency's partners, is facing as he searches for a young man who is either a murderer...

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...

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,...

"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...