Nightcrawlers
A Nameless Detective Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A missing partner. A case echoing a chilling past. Can the "Nameless" detective find her before time runs out?
In Nightcrawlers, Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" detective, one of the most consistently praised private investigators in American crime fiction, faces a race against the clock when his partner Vanessa disappears while investigating a suspicious case.
Vanessa takes on a case involving a deadbeat father, but things quickly escalate when she witnesses a man carrying a young girl into a house across the street. Determined to investigate, Vanessa goes in alone, but fails to return. As days pass, Nameless is haunted by the eerie similarities to his own past abduction, where he was shackled and left to die in a cabin in the woods. The chilling words "TAKING US TO A HOUSE IN THE WOODS" scrawled on a closet wall confirm his worst fears.
Meanwhile, Jake, another partner in the San Francisco-based agency, delves into a personal and dangerous case involving his estranged son's lover, a victim of violent gay-bashers. As both cases intertwine, Nameless and Jake must race against time to save Vanessa and confront their own haunting pasts.
Pronzini's award-winning skills are on full display in this gripping addition to the long-running "Nameless" detective series, delivering a suspenseful and emotionally charged mystery set against the gritty backdrop of San Francisco. Nightcrawlers is a pulse-pounding thriller that will keep readers guessing until the very end.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The fast-paced latest in the longest-running PI series currently published shows Pronzini at the top of his form. Nameless's beat is the mean streets of San Francisco but it's a vastly different city from the one inhabited by Sam Spade and the Continental Op. Gay-bashers seeking a thrill brutally beat a young man ("The crack of bone breaking damn near gave him a hard-on") and stalk gay lovers in the Castro district. Enter three seasoned investigators: Jake Runyon, Tamara and "Bill" (Nameless finally has a first name). When Jake learns that the young man attacked was his son's lover, he takes on the case on his own time and without pay, vowing to beat the night crawlers on their own turf. Pronzini handles the two main story lines and multiple, shifting points of view with aplomb while unsentimentally exploring violence against gays with understatement, righteous indignation and genuine pathos. The author's legendary pulp-collecting nameless investigator shines in a number of affecting scenes in which he visits a famed pulp writer, Russ Dancer, who's dying of cirrhosis and emphysema in a Redwood City hospital. Pronzini just doesn't get better than this. FYI:Pronzini created Nameless for a short story in 1969; he appeared in his first novel in 1971.
