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

Reviews

Pronzini is a pro. His Nameless Detective is a characterful narrator, and the northern California settings, here as always, are splendidly realized. This time out an insurance company hires Nameless to check into why Sheila Hunter, a glamorous widow with a small daughter, declined to accept the payout on her late husband's sudden accidental death policy. It turns out that Sheila has her own very good reasons for wanting to remain as anonymous as possible. What to do with her appealing little girl seems her main concern. Nameless finds himself involved more deeply than he wants to be when the woman disappears and the child has no one else to turn to. Meanwhile, the elderly neighbor of his feisty mother-in-law dies mysteriously at their retirement home, and what can he do about that? Needless to say, Nameless solves both crimes, though the subplot seems a little perfunctory. The great pleasure here is the voice: civilized, thoughtful, a tad cranky. Nameless is a keen observer of his fellow man (and woman)Aand by no means someone given to false heroics. He can be funny without being mean or silly (a drunken party scene is priceless) and never fails to play fair with the reader. It's a strong collection of virtues that has carried him through some two dozen expert thrillers, to which this is a fine addition. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Even though he's pushing 60, Pronzini's Nameless detective (Boobytrap, 1998, etc.) still has the chops to solve two mysteries this time around. The first is strictly business: Intercoastal Insurance wants to know why newly widowed Sheila Hunter won't cash the $50,000 policy that ultra-persistent agent Richard Twining jawboned her husband into buying. So Nameless buzzes on down Highway 208 into chic Greenwood, where he promptly gets shown the door by Sheila, her friends . . . even her dentist. It's not until Sheila vanishes, taking with her her precocious ten-year-old, Emily, that tongues loosen enough to give Nameless a peek behind the Hunters' ideal-couple façade into a world of betrayal and deception. Set against this toxic suburban landscape is the kitchen-table comfort of Nameless's mother-in-law, Cybil, author of the Sam Leatherman detective novels, who inveigles our hero (over chicken pot pie) into poking into a second case: the demise of her neighbor Archie Todd, who died of heart failure, but left under his bed a pink .10 milligram digitoxin pill--twice his normal dose and enough to send an angina patient like Archie into ventricular fibrillation. As in a good episode of NYPD Blue, the two plots interleaf but never intersect, offering more than their share of clues, leads, revelations, and red herrings along the way. Too self-righteous to be good company, Nameless is still a good detective--intuitive enough to get the right hunch and persistent enough to track it down time after time. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jack Hunter, a young computer consultant living in the upscale Northern California town of Greenwood, dies tragically in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. The 50 thousand dollar life-insurance claim is inexplicably refused by Sheila Hunter, the widow. The insurance company, hoping to cash in on a PR bonanza by "always honoring our claims," hires San Francisco's "Nameless" detective to follow up. Nameless learns that the Hunter family appeared in Greenwood from thin air: no records exist of their births, childhoods, or past jobs. When another murder seems connected to the Hunters' mysterious past, Nameless realizes that there is much more at stake here than money. The twenty-seventh "Nameless" novel functions as both a masterfully plotted, stand-alone mystery and as another chapter in the multivolume life story of an aging, twentieth-century knight errant, San Francisco's version of Travis McGee. The case ends badly, with no winners, but it sets Nameless, reluctantly, on the most significant journey of his life. That bodes well for the series' future. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

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