Discount Price: $6.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, very first served.
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780765349255
ISBN number: 0765349256
Label: Forge Books
Manufacturer: Forge Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Publishing house: Forge Books
Release Date: December 27, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 227502
Studio: Forge Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com Review:
Conceived as a lone-wolf sleuth, prowling the fog-embraced hills and criminal redoubts of modern San Francisco, Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective has evolved over the course of 29 novels into a semi-retired family man and mentor to two younger operatives, neither of whom seems any more capable of staying out of trouble than Nameless was in his prime. Fortunately, Nightcrawlers (the sequel to Spook) packs enough grim drama and emotional traumas to go around.
A couple of short-fused homophobes are putting the hurt on gay men in the city's Castro district, and among their victims is Kenneth Hitchcock, the elder lover of investigator Jake Runyon's estranged 22-year-old son, Joshua. So, for professional as well as personal reasons, the widowed Runyon takes an interest in these attacks, connecting the bashers to an underage hustler and an 'old-fashioned meat market' called the Dark Spot. Meanwhile, Nameless is summoned to the death bed of Russell Dancer, a manifestly repulsive former pulp-magazine contributor (first introduced in 1973's Undercurrent), now fallen on hard times, who has an unpublished manuscript he wants delivered to Nameless's mother-in-law, Cybil Wade, after whom he's lusted--unrequitedly--for half a century. It will be a test of Nameless's diplomatic acumen to fulfill Dancer's request, without drawing rancor from both Cybil and his wife, Kerry. A still greater test, however, awaits Nameless's grey junior partner, Tamara Corbin, whose assignment to stake out a deadbeat dad turns into something more perilous, after she spots her subject's neighbor sneaking an unidentified, squirming bundle into his house one dark eve.
It's evidence of just how much American detective fiction has changed over the last 30 years, that Nightcrawlers can come off as fresh. Even with its high-stakes, triple plot lines, this novel is more retro than revolutionary. Yet the Shamus-winning Pronzini, who has outlasted most of his original contemporaries to become a sage of the genre, continues to entice by emphasizing character development over simplistic violence or gruesome gimmickry, and by allowing Nameless to do something rarely attempted: explore the creaky twilight of his hero-hood (he's now in his early 60s). Seems that age really can bring wisdom. --J. Kingston Pierce
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Nightcrawlers benefits from being the mature work of a modern detective novel master, Bill Pronzini. The book is one of his finest creations in one of the most interesting detective series ever, the Nameless detective.
After dark, the slimiest people crawl out from under the rocks where they hide from the daylight to indulge in dark dreams and visions that involve savaging the others. Nightcrawlers displays, tracks, and squashes four such types of human vermin in a noir novel that will remind many of the 1930s California detective stories.
Nightcrawlers continues with Nameless in a detective agency with young partner, Tamara Corbin, who is tired of computer hacking and yearns for field work while missing her cello-playing lover and Jake Runyan who is burnt out from losing his wife to cancer and his son to his very first wife's hate. They have moved to South Park in San Francisco, and Nameless is having trouble remembering to head for the new office.
In a prologue, we are introduced to two young men who like to batter homosexuals after getting high on drugs and an obsessed man who is looking for a little girl who looks like Angie. All the characters will loom large in the main story.
A call from Jake's estranged son, Joshua, puts Jake into the middle of trying to stop the homosexual beatings. But will Jake find more than Joshua bargained for?
Tamara has a lead on a deadbeat dad and does two nights of surveillance without success. But she does spot something that doesn't seem right and looks into it.
Nameless gets a call to see Russ Dancer, a hack writer who appears in two earlier books, and is asked to deliver a mysterious package to Nameless's mother-in-law, Cybil.
The cases all start as detective procedurals and soon slip into being something more, character tests. From those tests, you'll find new depths in each of the characters as the fire of hate and conflict anneals their souls.
The interplay of the plot lines provides a good balance to the book and keeps the novel from depending too much on any one aspect of the stories. As a result, you get a rounded sense of the three detectives that wouldn't otherwise be possible. I was reminded of the 87th Precinct books by Ed McBain except I thought that the local color, noir overtones, and plot threads were more interesting here in Nightcrawlers.
Rated by buyers 
-
I noticed it in the last book and I'll say it again - the detective is only pseudo-nameless. They do, in fact, refer to him as `Bill' several times in the novel. That aside, it was a good detective story. It teeters on the edge of hard-boiled, but it's soft enough not to offend anyone's sensibilities. I think this is a great series for those who don't want the true cozies, but also don't want too graphic descriptions or really, really nasty plot lines. It won't give you nightmares, but it will make you think.
I particularly like the very diverse group of characters portrayed, both in the agency and as bit players. The dialogue and interaction ring true, the storyline flows wonderfully, and there's just enough of an `Oh!' factor at the end. You kind of see the ending coming, but not soon enough to spoil the surprise. Honestly, I think it would appeal to both cozy and hard-bitten crime buffs, and I'll almost certainly end up reading more.
Rated by buyers -
First off - covers can be deceiving. The Nightcrawlers title, along with the hazy figure at the end of a dark tunnel, initially gave me the impression that this was a suspense series in the creepy, X-Files sort of vein. I was heading to the beach for the weekend, stopped at the store for snacks, and the cover caught my eye: it looked interesting, and I bought it on impulse, without even reading the blurbs on the back cover.
Well. You can't get much further from X-Files territory. Nightcrawlers is basically a compilation of stories from the Nameless detective agency, blended together. Russ Dancer, a dying hack author, has commissioned Nameless (I'm still not quite sure where the whole 'Nameless' bit came about - his name is Bill) to carry out his last wish - to give a mysterious package to an old flame. Investigator Jake Runyon tries to help his estranged son, after his son's partner is a victim of a brutal gay-bashing. And Nameless's workaholic junior partner, Tamara Corbin, stumbles onto a kidnapping while on a stakeout.
Pronzini has plenty of experience in his genre, and it shows. The themes are dark and gritty, and his writing is tight and focused. The three main characters are well-drawn, if not particularly distinctive, or unfortunately, even memorable (except for maybe Nameless). The book kind of stumbles along until Tamara disappears, and Nameless slides out of the background and comes front and center. Many of the supporting characters are stereotypes, and dialogue intended to establish characterization often doesn't ring true. And coming in to the series so late, I had a little trouble keeping track of who was who and what was going on for the very first couple of chapters. Pronzini alternates his main protagonists point of view, abruptly switching between plotlines from chapter to chapter. It's handled as smoothly as possible and I don't really see a better way around it, but the device still slows the narrative. Each time I got interested in one of the stories, I was yanked away and thrust back into the middle of another, until they all verged together about halfway through the book.
There aren't many authors who manage to create a character for one novel, or over the course of a short series; much less successfully sustain the series over the course of three or four decades. Lawrence Block and his Matt Scudder series come to mind... and that's not a bad comparison, in the way Nameless has grown and evolved over the course of 35 years. But even with the disturbing subject matter he's working with here, Pronzini can't quite build up the dark and disturbing atmosphere that's the hallmark of the Scudder books. That's not an interest killer though, because the events that unfold (at least in this installment) are even more realistic as written in such a straightforward manner.
All in all, even with a little nitpicking, I was pretty impressed. Enough to go back to the beginning, and learn more about Nameless and his associates.
Rated by buyers -
First off - covers can be deceiving. The Nightcrawlers title, along with the hazy figure at the end of a dark tunnel, initially gave me the impression that this was a suspense series in the creepy, X-Files sort of vein. I was heading to the beach for the weekend, stopped at the store for snacks, and the cover caught my eye: it looked interesting, and I bought it on impulse, without even reading the blurbs on the back cover.
Well. You can't get much further from X-Files territory. Nightcrawlers is basically a compilation of stories from the Nameless detective agency, blended together. Russ Dancer, a dying hack author, has commissioned Nameless (I'm still not quite sure where the whole 'Nameless' bit came about - his name is Bill) to carry out his last wish - to give a mysterious package to an old flame. Investigator Jake Runyon tries to help his estranged son, after his son's partner is a victim of a brutal gay-bashing. And Nameless's workaholic junior partner, Tamara Corbin, stumbles onto a kidnapping while on a stakeout.
Pronzini has plenty of experience in his genre, and it shows. The themes are dark and gritty, and his writing is tight and focused. The three main characters are well-drawn, if not particularly distinctive, or unfortunately, even memorable (except for maybe Nameless). The book kind of stumbles along until Tamara disappears, and Nameless slides out of the background and comes front and center. Many of the supporting characters are stereotypes, and dialogue intended to establish characterization often doesn't ring true. And coming in to the series so late, I had a little trouble keeping track of who was who and what was going on for the very first couple of chapters. Pronzini alternates his main protagonists point of view, abruptly switching between plotlines from chapter to chapter. It's handled as smoothly as possible and I don't really see a better way around it, but the device still slows the narrative. Each time I got interested in one of the stories, I was yanked away and thrust back into the middle of another, until they all verged together about halfway through the book.
There aren't many authors who manage to create a character for one novel, or over the course of a short series; much less successfully sustain the series over the course of three or four decades. Lawrence Block and his Matt Scudder series come to mind... and that's not a bad comparison, in the way Nameless has grown and evolved over the course of 35 years. But even with the disturbing subject matter he's working with here, Pronzini can't quite build up the dark and disturbing atmosphere that's the hallmark of the Scudder books. That's not an interest killer though, because the events that unfold (at least in this installment) are even more realistic as written in such a straightforward manner.
All in all, even with a little nitpicking, I was pretty impressed. Enough to go back to the beginning, and learn more about Nameless and his associates.
Rated by buyers -
There's a certain style of writing that Bill Pronzini embraces. Some might call it harsh. Unlike the authors who describe the event or the perps in language more acceptable for readers, PC if you will, Pronzini calls a . . . well you get my drift.
This is a troika of stories. Tamara Corbin, who has grown into the putative 'head' of the Detective Agency but lacks the field bacground of Bill and Runyon, gets involved with the kidnapping of a 6-year old girl that she inadvertantly stumbles upon while surveilling an adjacent house for a child support skip-trace.
Bill, 'Nameless,' answers the plea of a man dying of cirrhosis only to be asked to deliver a package to his mother-in-law with whom the man had some relationship years earlier. This sends the family into turmoil, not surprisingly for everyone but Bill, who is left chagrined and confused. Come on Bill. What did you expect?
Jake Runyon continues to deal with the rejection of his gay son and investigates a series of gay bashings in the Castro District of San Francisco, all the while mourning the death of his wife, Colleen.
All in all the dialogue is crisp and very real, quite good actually, almost a throwback to the days of Chandler and Spillane, but the plots lack the riveting aspect of say "The Innocent" or "Velocity" by Coben and Koontz. Like Scotch, Prinzoni is an acquired taste. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Find other books like this one:
