Bill Pronzini is a spectacularly high-volume author, having written more than 300 short stories and more than 100 novels. He’s also compiled a large number of anthologies of mystery, science fiction, and Western short fiction. But he’s mostly known as a writer of mysteries. The list of his awards is too long to mention here but among them are The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1987, and the Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America in 2008.
His Nameless Detective series started in 1971 with The Snatch and seems to have ended in 2017 with Endgame, the 46th title. While Pronzini is still writing and anything is possible, all of the running plot threads are wrapped up in #46 and the main characters appear to be settled on a predictable trajectory. It’s logical to believe that this is the graceful coda to what is a remarkable series.
Nameless is a fortyish private investigator in San Francisco. He is clearly modeled on the early pulp detectives such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but he has greater depth and his character develops over the course of the series. Not much is known of his background but careful reading of multiple books reveals he’s of Italian descent. He served in military intelligence during the Vietnam War and was a police officer before striking out on his own as a private eye. He is a devoted collector of pulp magazines. He has an ongoing romance that is chronically challenged in each book in addition to the professional puzzle that he is hired to sort out. Late in the series Nameless acquires a couple of partners, which adds some administrative organization to his operation but in the early days, even when he teamed with a former police officer buddy, he is largely a lone operator.
I have not read all of the stories, maybe half of them. Of those I have read, my stand-out favorite is #16, Shackles (St. Martin’s Press, 1988), mostly because of the truly offbeat plot. Nameless has parked his car and is on his way to his apartment building one night when he is seized and drugged. He awakens to find himself in a single-room cabin in a dense forest. His leg is chained to a stake in the middle of the floor. He has a small amount of food and water. A voice advises him that as Nameless wrecked the speaker’s life, so now will the speaker destroy Nameless. And the kidnapper leaves Nameless alone to die of thirst and starvation. How Nameless deals first with his outrage, then with the isolation, and then with his release make fascinating reading.
Pronzini’s writing is taut, spare, not an extra word. Even his titles are generally only one word to reflect the stripped-down style. The plots are logical and well-constructed. There’s relatively little violence in the Nameless books; he tends to think himself out of situations rather than shoot his way out.
For fans of private investigator series and especially anyone who prizes a good plot.
And his first name turns out to be Bill, as I recall. His and Marcia Muller’s most they-like running characters interact in both series (the Sharon McCone stories and novels, in her case).
Yes, once Nameless acquired business associates he had to have a name of some kind. I was impressed at how long he went without people actually addressing him by a name of some kind.