Pronzini, Bill Books - Page 2

Locked Room Puzzles (Academy Mystery Novellas, Vol 3)

Martin Harry Greenberg, Bill Pronzini

Amazon Price: $11.00 List Price: $11.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Academy Chicago Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 95 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Fun Collection-- Where Are Volumes One and Two?? 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Any mystery fan will enjoy these well-selected locked room yarns. It's like a little box of bonbons-- none too long, all amusing and well-plotted, all with a nice twist. I hope to trip over the previous volumes.

Charlie Chan in the Pawns of Death

Bill Pronzini, Jeffrey M. Wallmann, Earl Derr Biggers

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Editorial Review:

"Checkmate!" That was the last word uttered to Charlie Chan and Prefect of Police Claude DeBevre by a dying reporter. The man had been murdered . . . stabbed to death and left to die in a vacant hotel room. It is the second murder in 24 hours at the Transcontinental Chess Tournament, and Charlie Chan has been summoned from a peaceful and long-deserved vacation to help solve the crime before international scandal ruins the tournament's good name! Originally published in Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine in 1974, this is the first book appearance of The Pawns of Death.

Spook: A Nameless Detective Novel

Bill Pronzini

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Roll out the red carpet. Uncap a bottle of decent beer. Nameless is back, and Bill Pronzini's much-praised Bleeders did not conclude a series that Booklist calls "a stunning and unique achievement in crime fiction" and "one of the greatest-ever detective series." Instead, in Spook, the pivotal new twenty-eighth novel in the remarkably successful award-winning Nameless series, Pronzini, working at the top of his form, takes his seasoned private-eye hero to a new phase of a still-evolving thirty-year career. 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.

Quicksilver a "Nameless Detective" Mystery

Bill Pronzini

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Blue Lonesome

Bill Pronzini

Amazon Price: $8.95 List Price: $8.95 Usually ships in 10 to 12 days By: Walker & Company Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $0.74

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

OH LONESOME BLUE 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Okay. Here's the set-up:
You are a lonely middle-aged CPA and you eat at the same places almost every day. You notice a sad looking woman, not a pretty one, mind you, just sad, and you identify with her because she is so obviously lonesome, just like our CPA.
You get the nerve up to try and speak with her, and it doesn't work. She doesn't tell you her name or anything about her. You follow her home one night and find out her name is Janet Mitchell. You are obsessed with why she's so lonely. Soon she stops coming to the restaurant and you're worried. You go visit her apartment complex and speak to the oriental landlady. She tells you that the lady is dead, committing suicide in her bathtub. Now, would you even imagine pursuing this any further? Well, James Messenger, our hero does.
Although I found the setup for this novel quite unbelievable, Pronzini manages to make it work with his wonderful prose and sense of characterizations. Needless to say, Messenger ends up in the lady's hometown of Beulah, Nevada, and finds out her real name, and learns that she had been accused of murdering her philandering husband AND her eight year old daughter. Messenger knows she didn't do it (how, you got me!). Soon, Messenger faces the expected town bullies and even the dead woman's sister. He takes a job on her ranch, and gets more and more involved with the lady and the townspeople.
The book is short, moves along well, and the ending is quite a surprise, at least to me.
It's not what I consider a great book, but if you can get past the ludicrous setup, you should enjoy it.
RECOMMENDED.

Editorial Review:

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.

Boobytrap (Pronzini, Bill)

Bill Pronzini

Amazon Price: $23.00 List Price: $23.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Carroll & Graf Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $1.16

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Another superb entry in this outstanding series 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

If you haven't met "Nameless" yet, or encountered the work of Bill Pronzini, you are in for a rare treat. Start 'Boobytrap' and you can begin planning how to spend your reading time over the upcoming holidays--by starting from the beginning of this superb series. Pronzini's books are very well-plotted, contain complex and engaging characters, and are written in a fluid but muscular style balanced with refreshing touches of humor. Pronzini does the traditions of the detective genre proud, while still remaining very much his own man. Mystery writing doesn't get much better than this. Kick back and enjoy.

An excellent read 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful.

If you haven't met Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective", this novel is a good one to start with. Pronzini's writing is clear, and he knows how to keep the reader on the edge of his seat. If you read this one you will soon want to read all his other "Nameless Detective" novels.

Editorial Review:

A quiet vacation turns deadly and pits the "Nameless Detective" against a vengeful mad bomber in a nightmarish battle of wits in this 25th case for this "classic private-eye hero" ("Chicago Sun-Times".

Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel ("Nameless" Detective Novels)

Bill Pronzini

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" detective has become one of the longest-lived, and consistently highly praised, private investigators in the annals of American crime fiction and the award-winning author proves, once again, that his skills
are unmatched.

Things were quiet in the San Francisco-based agency Nameless founded and his

partners, Jake and Vanessa were itching to get back to work. A deadbeat father needed to be found, and Vanessa needed to do some field work, so she took the file and headed out to keep an eye on the last known address.

Jake got to work on something much more personal...and dangerous. The Castro had become the stomping ground, literally, of two violent gay-bashers and the most recent victim was Jake's son's lover. Father and son are estranged, but maybe helping now would help them reconcile. That was Jake's thought when he started. For Nameless it was all a matter of letting everyone know that if they needed his help, he was there.

Jake was handling his situation but for Vanessa, things got out of hand. Her perp never showed up, but when she saw a man carrying a young girl into the house across the street, she knew something was wrong....and about to get worse, because she was going to investigate what was going on.

When she doesn't show up a few days later, Nameless feels a sinking in his gut: a few years ago he'd been kidnapped, shackled, and left to die in a cabin in the woods and something about Vanessa's disappearance echoed too loudly. When he discovers the house she'd investigated on her own and sees the words TAKING US TO A HOUSE IN THE WOODS scrawled on a closet wall, the echo became thunderous.

Now it was a race against time, and the clock had begun ticking before "Nameless" and Jake heard the starter's gun.

Crazybone (A Nameless Detective novel)

Bill Pronzini

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Posh and affluent, a mecca for the horsy set, the California community of Greenwood hides its dirty laundry behind the stuccoed facades of Spanish-style houses and locks its secrets inside wrought-iron gates. "Nameless" knows that as well as any, but he uncovers more deceit, adultery, fraud, and betrayal-not to mention larceny and murder-than he might have expected in this tautly concocted novel of crime and detection. Yet, even before "Nameless" visits the handsomely appointed offices of the blond, tanned insurance agent Rich Twining and the estate of the recently widowed Sheila Hunter, his private investigator's suspicions are raised. For why would anyone, however rich and beautiful and bereaved, refuse to claim fifty thousand dollars due in life insurance? The question is simple enough, but the answer lies several murders, many miles, ten years, a devious name game, and one baffling clue -- crazybone -- away. As always, "Nameless" proves himself "the thinking man's detective" (Chicago Sun-Times), and his creator, Bill Pronzini, keeps the suspenseful pages turning up to this uncanny novel's moment of revelation.

Pure Pulp

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Pulp magazines like Dime Detective and Crime Busters flourished in America between 1920 and 1950. Their purpose was only to entertain, yet they produced such giants in crime fiction as Robert Bloch, Frederic Brown, John Jakes, Leigh Brackett, and John D. MacDonald, all of whom feature in this new anthology.

So are Ed McBain, Mickey Spillane, Vin Packer, Donald Westlake, Dorothy B. Hughes, Helen Nielsen, David Goodis, Evan Hunter, and two dozen tough-writing others whose stories appeared in the more artful The Saint, Manhunt, Verdict, and Tightrope as well as Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's mystery magazines. With their moody, atmospheric plots and psychological depth, the pulp fiction in this volume shaped the modern crime story as we know it today. Pick this anthology of pure pulp up. You won't put it down.

Praise for American Pulp "[An] exciting and exemplary collection" - Drood Review of Mystery "A bargain...560 pages of stuff your mother warned you to keep away from." Kirkus Reviews

The Alias Man

Bill Pronzini

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Character development shines 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Pronzini steps away from his "nameless" series to provide another excellent character-driven stand-alone novel. The multi-viewpoint story takes the reader to several locales, all beautifully described and interwoven into the narrative. Rather than giving us "victims," Pronzini portrays intelligent, strong women who are able to react effectively after having been done wrong. With every new book, Pronzini further establishes himself as one of the finest storytellers writing today.

Editorial Review:

The women in his life call him the Alias Man. From Santa Fe to Pennsylvania, from Vancouver to San Francisco, he has seduced and charmed, stolen and disappeared, leaving unbearable hurt in his wake. Then his three most recent victims-- Jessie, Sarah, and Morgan-- find one another and collectively discover his involvement in an even more profitable and deadly scheme. As they work together to carry out their hunger for justice, each is forced to confront and overcome yet another enemy: her own fears and weaknesses.

 

In The Alias Man, internationally-acclaimed, award-winning crime writer Bill Pronzini offers a psychological thriller filled with the hallmark twists, turns, and surprises of his wicked imagination.