Crazybone - Hardcover

Pronzini, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786707305 ISBN 13: 9780786707300

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 2000

Synopsis

The "Nameless Detective" journeys behind the lush facade of the affluent California community of Greenwood when he investigates an unusual case of insurance fraud and uncovers a complex web of larceny, adultery, deceit, betrayal, and murder. By the Shamus Award-winning author of Boobytrap.

About this title

Review

Author Bill Pronzini's series PI, known only as "Nameless," has gotten older, grayer, and wiser since he made his first appearance in print. But this case, his 26th, is a first of sorts: a widow who turns down the $50,000 payout from a life insurance policy on her husband, who died in a straightforward enough highway accident caused by a drunk driver. There's nothing fishy about the circumstances of Jack Hunter's death, but something odd turns up when the protagonist looks into Hunter's life: it seems to have started only a decade ago. Sheila Hunter, whose background is equally obscured, is not only not talking, she's deathly afraid. And the only clue Nameless has to go on is one word uttered by the widow before she clams up: "Crazybone."

It's not until the method employed in a series of murders long buried in the Hunters' past is revealed that the meaning of the word (and the title) becomes clear. But before that happens, the couple's 10-year-old daughter convinces the detective that there's more to the story than Sheila Hunter's surprising lack of interest in collecting the money due her--and steals his heart as well. Pronzini is a master craftsman, and his series hero doesn't need a name to make readers accompany him willingly as he steers a moral course through the affluent California setting of his novels. The ending has a small surprise that bodes well for the author's next book; until then, his extensive backlist should keep new "Nameless" fans entertained. --Jane Adams

About the Author

Bill Pronzini is simply one of the masters. He seems to have taken a crack at just about every genre: mysteries, noirish thrillers, historicals, locked-room mysteries, adventure novels, spy capers, men's action, westerns, and, of course, his masterful, long-running Nameless private detective series, now entering its fourth decade, with no signs of creative flagging. He's also ghosted several Brett Halliday short stories as Michael Shayne for Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, and has managed to collaborate with such fellow writers as John Lutz, Barry Wahlberg, Collin Wilcox and Marcia Muller. Still, if he never ventured into fiction writing, his non-fiction work, as both writer and editor, would still earn him a place in the P.I. genre's Hall of Fame. Besides his two tributes to some of the very worst in crime fiction (what he calls "alternative classics"), Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek, and one on western fiction (entitled Six Gun in Cheek, naturally), he's the co-author (with Marcia Muller) of 1001 Midnights.

Edition details

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0786707305
• ISBN 13: 9780786707300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197