Books, authors, can be lifelong friends to someone with a passion for reading. If this is true, then two of my best and oldest friends are Bill Pronzini and The Nameless Detective.
I distinctly remember the very first time I saw Pronzini's name on a book. It was sometime in the early 1980's. I was looking around though a used bookstore called The Book Worm, trying to find something good to read. Something new. Wearying of science fiction, I was reading more thrillers and horror. Once book caught my eye...it was called The Running of Beasts by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini. I was well aware of Malzberg. He wrote some wild SF, and his harrowing novel, Herovit's World, really impressed me. I bought it.
The Running of Beasts is an excellent thriller and it was quite a bit ahead of its time. Years later Thomas Harris and Hannibal Lecter made stories about killers disgustingly popular, but it was still a fresh genre back when this one was published in 1976.
I read the other collaborations between Malzberg and Pronzini and I enjoyed them all. There were two other thrillers, Acts of Mercy and Night Screams, as well as a bizarre one called Prose Bowl. Prose Bowl is a SF story that depicts a future where writing is the number one sport and contestants face off and compete with typewriters, rather than balls and bats.
The first Pronzini I read was called Panic. It's a tight suspense novel with nice pacing and solid characterization and mood. From there I began reading the Nameless Detective books: The Snatch, Undercurrent, The Vanished. I liked them. A lot.
The next two Pronzini books that I read solidified him as one of my very favorite writers. One, Blowback, was a Nameless book. It was, to me, the one that really got the series kicked into gear, establishing Nameless as one of the most distinctive and likable private eyes in the genre. The other was a stand-alone book called Snowbound. Snowbound dealt with a small town in the grip of a record-breaking blizzard. A trio of sadistic thieves choose it as a time to rob the entire population.
I never missed a Bill Pronzini book after that. Whether he wrote in the Western genre, suspense, horror or good old reliable Nameless. Decades have passed and favorite writers of mine have come and gone, but Bill Pronzini has continued to improve his craft, honing his language and skills to create a rich and enviable body of work.
And Nameless is the heart of Bill's ouvre. I've read them all and it's funny...the details of the cases that Nameless get entwined in grow blurry in my memory. Yet what stands out in my mind is the triumphs and tragedies of Nameless' personal life. The people in his orbit as the years have gone by.
Savages is the name of the 32nd Nameless Detective book and it was just recently released. I just finished reading it and it's no surprise that Pronzini has delivered another winner. The books have grown more complicated in recent years, with shifting viewpoints and multiple plots entwining the pages. Savages deals with Kerry's cancer struggle and two different investigations. Nameless takes on an ugly one that deals with a sister of a woman who died from an apparent accidental fall down a stairway. She loathes her sister's widower and is certain that he was somehow responsible. At the same time, Jake Runyan takes a trip to a small, decaying town to deliver a simple subpoena to a man that may have witnessed a robbery. Instead of finding him, Runyan discovers a hanging corpse and a two-by-four to the head. Further inquires land Jake in a nightmarish scenario of madness, obsession, torture and murder.
Savages. Human beings without feelings or any sort of conscience. Sociopaths. The darkest elements of the human condition are explored in the pages of Pronzini's fiction, yet he also shows us another side of the coin. Nameless, Kerry, Runyan and Tamara are all flawed, but they are essentially decent, caring and loyal individuals that represent the very best aspects of humanity.
With each new book Runyan and Tamara become more fleshed-out characters, with depth and individual personalities. I think I was as reluctant as Nameless to accept them into his world, but like him I've come to care deeply about them.
Having a series of books about an unnamed detective that might have seemed like a novelty idea so long ago has evolved into one of the richest and most rewarding series of books in print today. I love a lot of series fiction...Lansdale's Hap and Leonard, Preston and Child's Pendergast novels, F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack..., but none are as satisfying on an emotional gut level as the Nameless Detective books and stories. When a new one arrives, it takes immediate precedence over any other books in my To Be Read list.
A few years ago I came to a shocking revelation. As much as I loved the works of Bill Pronzini, I had contributed almost nothing to him in return. I always borrowed the books from the library or maybe found them at used book sales. That's wrong. I've amended that and I've bought copies of his past several books. My miniscule efforts to support Bill Pronzini have surely neither made nor broken his career, but I feel satisfaction in the knowledge that I am returning something to a writer that has given me so many hours of reading pleasure.
I distinctly remember the very first time I saw Pronzini's name on a book. It was sometime in the early 1980's. I was looking around though a used bookstore called The Book Worm, trying to find something good to read. Something new. Wearying of science fiction, I was reading more thrillers and horror. Once book caught my eye...it was called The Running of Beasts by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini. I was well aware of Malzberg. He wrote some wild SF, and his harrowing novel, Herovit's World, really impressed me. I bought it.
The Running of Beasts is an excellent thriller and it was quite a bit ahead of its time. Years later Thomas Harris and Hannibal Lecter made stories about killers disgustingly popular, but it was still a fresh genre back when this one was published in 1976.
I read the other collaborations between Malzberg and Pronzini and I enjoyed them all. There were two other thrillers, Acts of Mercy and Night Screams, as well as a bizarre one called Prose Bowl. Prose Bowl is a SF story that depicts a future where writing is the number one sport and contestants face off and compete with typewriters, rather than balls and bats.
The first Pronzini I read was called Panic. It's a tight suspense novel with nice pacing and solid characterization and mood. From there I began reading the Nameless Detective books: The Snatch, Undercurrent, The Vanished. I liked them. A lot.
The next two Pronzini books that I read solidified him as one of my very favorite writers. One, Blowback, was a Nameless book. It was, to me, the one that really got the series kicked into gear, establishing Nameless as one of the most distinctive and likable private eyes in the genre. The other was a stand-alone book called Snowbound. Snowbound dealt with a small town in the grip of a record-breaking blizzard. A trio of sadistic thieves choose it as a time to rob the entire population.
I never missed a Bill Pronzini book after that. Whether he wrote in the Western genre, suspense, horror or good old reliable Nameless. Decades have passed and favorite writers of mine have come and gone, but Bill Pronzini has continued to improve his craft, honing his language and skills to create a rich and enviable body of work.
And Nameless is the heart of Bill's ouvre. I've read them all and it's funny...the details of the cases that Nameless get entwined in grow blurry in my memory. Yet what stands out in my mind is the triumphs and tragedies of Nameless' personal life. The people in his orbit as the years have gone by.
Savages is the name of the 32nd Nameless Detective book and it was just recently released. I just finished reading it and it's no surprise that Pronzini has delivered another winner. The books have grown more complicated in recent years, with shifting viewpoints and multiple plots entwining the pages. Savages deals with Kerry's cancer struggle and two different investigations. Nameless takes on an ugly one that deals with a sister of a woman who died from an apparent accidental fall down a stairway. She loathes her sister's widower and is certain that he was somehow responsible. At the same time, Jake Runyan takes a trip to a small, decaying town to deliver a simple subpoena to a man that may have witnessed a robbery. Instead of finding him, Runyan discovers a hanging corpse and a two-by-four to the head. Further inquires land Jake in a nightmarish scenario of madness, obsession, torture and murder.
Savages. Human beings without feelings or any sort of conscience. Sociopaths. The darkest elements of the human condition are explored in the pages of Pronzini's fiction, yet he also shows us another side of the coin. Nameless, Kerry, Runyan and Tamara are all flawed, but they are essentially decent, caring and loyal individuals that represent the very best aspects of humanity.
With each new book Runyan and Tamara become more fleshed-out characters, with depth and individual personalities. I think I was as reluctant as Nameless to accept them into his world, but like him I've come to care deeply about them.
Having a series of books about an unnamed detective that might have seemed like a novelty idea so long ago has evolved into one of the richest and most rewarding series of books in print today. I love a lot of series fiction...Lansdale's Hap and Leonard, Preston and Child's Pendergast novels, F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack..., but none are as satisfying on an emotional gut level as the Nameless Detective books and stories. When a new one arrives, it takes immediate precedence over any other books in my To Be Read list.
A few years ago I came to a shocking revelation. As much as I loved the works of Bill Pronzini, I had contributed almost nothing to him in return. I always borrowed the books from the library or maybe found them at used book sales. That's wrong. I've amended that and I've bought copies of his past several books. My miniscule efforts to support Bill Pronzini have surely neither made nor broken his career, but I feel satisfaction in the knowledge that I am returning something to a writer that has given me so many hours of reading pleasure.
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