Bill Pronzini

Author Information
Bill Pronzini's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    173 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1971
  • Latest Book:
    December 2024
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Full Series List in Order

A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery

9 - The Paradise Affair (Feb-2021)

A Nameless Detective Mystery

1 - The Snatch (1971)
2 - The Vanished (1973)
3 - Undercurrent (1973)
4 - Blowback (1977)
5 - Twospot (1978)
5.5 - Thin Air (Jan-1987)
6 - Labyrinth (Mar-1980)
7 - Hoodwink (May-1981)
8 - Scattershot (Apr-1982)
9 - Dragonfire (Sep-1982)
10 - Bindlestiff (Sep-1983)
11 - Case File (Jan-1983)
12 - Quicksilver (Mar-1984)
13 - Nightshades (Aug-1984)
14 - Double (Oct-1984)
15 - Bones (Jun-1985)
16 - Deadfall (Jul-1986)
17 - Shackles (Jun-1988)
18 - Jackpot (Mar-1990)
19 - Breakdown (Jan-1991)
20 - Quarry (Dec-1991)
21 - Epitaphs (Oct-1992)
22 - Demons (Aug-1993)
23 - Hardcase (Jun-1995)
24 - Sentinels (Aug-1996)
25 - Spadework (May-1996)
26 - Illusions (Aug-1997)
27 - Booby Trap (Mar-1998)
28 - Crazybone (Aug-2000)
29 - Bleeders (Jan-2002)
30 - Spook (Jan-2003)
31 - Scenarios (May-2003)
32 - Nightcrawlers (Mar-2005)
33 - Mourners (Feb-2006)
34 - Savages (Jul-2007)
35 - Fever (Jun-2008)
36 - Schemers (Apr-2009)
37 - Betrayers (Jul-2010)
38 - Camouflage (Jun-2011)
39 - Hellbox (Jul-2012)
40 - Nemesis (Jul-2013)
41 - Strangers (Jul-2014)
42 - Vixen (Jun-2015)
42.5 - Zigzag (May-2016)
43 - Endgame (Jun-2017)
Femme (Nov-2012)
Kinsmen (Nov-2012)

Multi-Author Series List

A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery

6 - The Bags of Tricks Affair (Mar-2018)
7 - The Flimflam Affair (Jan-2019)
8 - The Stolen Gold Affair (Apr-2020)

Book List in Order: 173 titles

  • The Snatch

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 1

    The nine-year-old son of financial speculator Louis Martinetti is being held for $300,000 ransom, and the Nameless Detective hires on to handle the drop. When the time comes, however, the money is hijacked and a man is murdered. The child and the kil...

  • Undercurrent

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 3

    Three months of marriage to Walter Paige had been enough to send Judith Paige to the Nameless Detective, suspecting that her husband's weekend "business" trips mask an affair. The detective follows him to a coastal village called Cypress Bay and watc...

  • The Vanished

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 2

    VANISHED His name was Roy Sands, and he had everything to look forward to. He was getting out of the service and coming home to marry his beautiful fiancée. He had his debts paid, money in the bank, and a happy new life ahead of him. Then Roy Sands...

  • Snowbound

    Another nightmarish tale from the author of Breakdown. When the blizzard hit and the avalanche that followed cut them off, the 75 hardy residents of a small resort village in the Sierra Nevadas quietly prepared for a Christmas in isolation. But three...

  • Stalker

    Men who participated in a never solved robbery of an armored truck are being picked off one-by-one 11 years after the crime. Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror. -Robert Ludlum Once in a crocodil...

  • Midnight Specials

  • Blowback

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 4

    Tensions are building at Harry Burroughs' fishing camp in the Sierra Nevada as a beautiful woman, her obsessively jealous husband, and several other men gather together. Burroughs calls in his old service buddy, the Nameless Detective, to prevent vio...

  • Twospot

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy
    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 5

    Bill Pronzini's "Nameless" private eye and Colin Wilcox's Lieutenant Frank Hastings join forces to solve a grizzly case of murder and to crack a bizarre conspiracy surrounding an old California winemaking family. Twospot When "Nameless" is hired ...

  • Labyrinth

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 6

    A young woman's body is discovered near a deserted highway -- with the Nameless Detective's calling card in her purse. Nameless is puzzled. He wonders where she got his card. He also wonders where his next job is coming from. So when a well-to-do wom...



  • The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural

  • Creature!

  • Hoodwink

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 7

    First edition. Pronzini's critically acclaimed "nameless Detective," collector of pulp magazines, attends the first annual Western Pulp Con in San Francisco and is soon involved in a locked room mystery. 216 pages. boards, dust jacket.. 8vo.....

  • The Arbor House Treasury of Great Western Stories

  • The Arbor House Treasury of Mystery and Suspense

  • Specter! A Chrestomathy of Spookery

  • Scattershot

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 8

    Business is booming for Nameless; he's started in on three new cases in one week. But every single one of them turns bad some way. In the first, a husband disappears from a car that Nameless has been following. In the second, a woman is mysteriously ...

  • Dragonfire

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 9

    Investigating the shooting of his friend Lt. Eberhardt, the "Nameless Detective" finds himself caught in a life-threatening web of murder, bribery, violence, and organized crime in San Francisco's Chinatown...

  • Gun in Cheek

    Offers a witty, incisive study of crime fiction, examining the American and English contributions to the genre, types of mysteries, and the evolution of twentieth-century social prejudices as revealed in mystery writing...

  • Case File

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 11

    It was fifteen years ago when the big, sort-of-sloppy, brew-loving P.I. appeared on the scene, dazzling readers with keen solutions to seemingly unsolvable crimes. And just as his disheveled demeanor gave no hint of the brilliant mind that lay behin...



  • The Gallows Land

    Arizona Territory 1878...Following the death of his young wife, Roy Boone wanders aimlessly in the arid Southwest, desperate for water. Instead, he finds a heap of trouble--when he meets a pretty young woman whose face bears the signs of an abusive h...

  • The Arbor House Treasury of Detective and Mystery Stories from the Great Pulps

  • Bindlestiff

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 10

    His P.I. license reinstated, his old friend Eberhardt back on his feet, and things with his girlfriend Kerry patched up, Nameless is ready to roll again. On his first day back at work, he lands an assignment he would have thought went out with the Gr...

  • The Mystery Hall of Fame

  • The Western Hall of Fame

  • Quicksilver

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 12

    The author sets his latest Nameless Detective mystery in San Francisco's Japantown, where the sleuth tries to trace the source of Mrs. Haruko Gage's lavish but anonymous gifts and discovers a grisly ritual murder in the Nippon Mafia...

  • The Eye

    The residents of a single block on the Upper West Side of Manhattan turn to Detective E.L. Oxman of the New York Police Department when they are terrorized by an obsessed madman calling himself "The Eye of God"...

  • Nightshades

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 13

    When Great Western Insurance hires the Nameless Detective to investigate an accidental death in a small northern California town, it looks like a routine case -- one he expects to solve swiftly so he and his lady friend, Kerry Wade, can take a much n...

  • The Outlaws

  • The Best Western Stories of Steve Frazee



    The 11 stories collected here testify to the success of Steve Frazee, whose avowed aim, as stated in the biographical sketch on the jacket of his first major novel, Shining Mountains, was to "write honest Westerns.”

     

    Hones...



  • The Best Western Stories of Wayne D. Overholser



    From the pulp magazines devoted to stories of the Wild West emerged a few genuine craftsmen with a deep understanding of human nature: Wayne D. Overholser, author of more than 100 novels and 400 stories, was one of these writers.

     <...

  • Double

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 14

    MYSTERY WAS THE ONLY THING THEY HAD IN COMMON. BUT THAT WAS MORE THAN ENOUGH... Sharon McCone had come home again: to her warm, troubled family, to San Diego and a convention of private detectives in a posh seaside hotel. For Sharon it was a chanc...

  • The Cowboys

  • Quincannon

    Investigating a huge counterfeiting operation working out of Silver City, Idaho, a thriving cattle and mining town, treasury agent John Quincannon poses as an alcoholic patent medicine salesman to follow a trail of deceit, betrayal, and murder. Repri...

  • Bones

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 15

    Thirty-five years after Harmon Crane's suicide in a locked room, the Nameless Detective attempts to uncover the reasons behind the kingpin of pulp detective fiction's death, and by so doing, he enters into a deadly game...

  • The Warriors

  • Murder in the First Reel

  • The Railroaders

    An anthology of twelve Western short stories including "Casey Jones," O. Henry's "The Passing of Black Eagle," Wayne D. Overholser's "Steel to the West," Giles A. Lutz's "Westward Rails," John Jakes' "Hell on the High Iron," and others...

  • Great Modern Police Stories

  • Deadfall

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 16

    The Nameless Detective, hired to prove the connection between the shooting of San Francisco lawyer Leonard Purcell and the apparently accidental fall of his brother, Kenneth, from a cliff six months earlier becomes involved in a labyrinth of surprise...



  • 1001 Midnights

  • The Cattlemen

  • Tales Of Mystery

    A collection of detective fiction from the pulp magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, with contributions from writers such as Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, John Jakes, Cornell Woolrich, and Paul Cain...

  • Thin Air

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 5.5

  • The Lighthouse

    Anticipating a peaceful and relaxing year in which to write and illustrate a book, college professor Jan Ryerson and his artist wife Alix move to the isolated Cape Despair Lighthouse on a desolate stretch of Oregon coast. But their well-laid plans ar...

  • Manhattan Mysteries

  • Graveyard Plots: The Best Short Stories of Bill Pronzini

    In this collection of 23 short stories, Bill Pronzini, prolific, award-winning west-coast mystery writer and creator of the well-known Nameless Detective series, the author's style and versatility truly shine. These tales including three that featur...

  • The Horse Soldiers

  • Prime Suspects

  • Uncollected Crimes



  • The Best Western Stories of Lewis B. Patten

    Patten’s characters are real people whose lives are shattered by the violence of a gunshot, who suffer from the brutality of misplaced hatred, and who sometimes succeed in living off the rugged land of the We...

  • Son of Gun in Cheek

    I could hardly wait to begin the investigation. Somehow, I firmly believed that (at last!) we were following a course that would clearly reveal — something! — from The Stingaree MurdersThe [police] men saluted in the darkness and stole aw...

  • The Gunfighters

  • Suspicious Characters

  • Criminal Elements

  • Shackles

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 17

    Kidnapped by a ruthless, amoral ex-con seeking revenge, the Nameless Detective is left to die, chained to the wall of a remote mountain cabin, and only his strength of will and determination stand between him and a lingering death...

  • The Texans

  • The Running of Beasts

    THEY ARE DEAD.

    THEY ARE HIDEOUSLY DEAD.

    FIVE WOMEN ARE DEAD.

    A HOMICIDAL MANIAC HAS KILLED FIVE WOMEN.

    Three down when Ferrara, a psychiatrist, and Valerie Broome, New York feature writer, arrive in the Adirondacks...

  • The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories

    With its roots in the American private-detective fiction of the 1920s but traceable back as far as Sherlock Holmes, the private-eye story remains as popular as ever. Here are thirty of the finest short novels and stories from the hardboiled world of ...

  • The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran

    The factors working against Horse-shy Halloran's plan to rob a Wells Fargo stagecoach are the arrival of detective Sam Quarternight, a second gang of robbers, and a series of mishaps that make Halloran an accidental hero...

  • Homicidal Acts

    Fourteen outstanding mystery authors--including Loren D. Estleman, Donald Westlake, Arthur C. Clarke, John Jakes, Norman Mailer, and Ray Bradbury--offer short stories rich in murder, mayhem, crime, and detection...

  • Hangings

    The sleepy town of Tule Bend came alive with terror after a drifter was found hanging. The constable knew his job was on the line if he didn't do something. When more swinging bodies appeared he knew he had to move fast because he was next on the han...

  • Kill or Cure

    TITLE: KILL OR CURE: 16 SHORT STORIES ABOUT MURDER AND MAYHEM IN THE WORLD OF MEDICINE 1989 First Edition AUTHOR: MARCIA MULLER and BILL PRONZINI PUBLISHER - (LOCATION) / COPYRIGHT: BONANZA BOOKS, 1989 EDITION: First Edition with 'h g f e d c b a' on...

  • The Californians

  • The Arizonans

  • More Wild Westerns

  • The Best Western Stories of Bill Pronzini

  • Jackpot

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 18

    The Nameless Detective investigates the curious suicide of his friend's brother--a man who had won a fortune at a Lake Tahoe casino prior to his death--and uncovers a complex scam in the world of high stakes gambling and mob-run casinos...

  • Firewind

    Three outlaws arrive in the country town of Big Tree, Calif., on a blazing hot day of a long dry summer, in this well-crafted western by veteran Pronzini (The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran). A huge shipment of munitions is a-sittin' in Big Tree jus...

  • The Northerners

    A collection of Western tales crosses the northern border to bring out stories of high adventure in the Canadian frontier, by such authors as Jack London, Rex Beach, Victor Rousseau, and Samuel Alexander White...

  • Dragonfire and Bindlestiff

    DRAGON FIRENursing their recently broken hearts and more than a few cold beers, Nameless and his friend Lt. Eberhardt are enjoying a lazy summer afternoonin Eberhardt's backyard as they watch the steaks sizzle and shoot the proverbial breeze. But the...

  • Christmas Out West

    A blend of frontier and holiday traditions celebrates Christmas in the Wild West with a collection of stories including Bret Harte's "How Santa Claus Came of Simpson's Bar," Jack Schadfer's "Stubby Pringle's Christmas," and "No Room at the Inn" by Bi...

  • The Northwesterners

    Stories of the American Pacific Northwest bring to life the rough-and-tumble world of logging camps, waterfronts, and mountains, in a collection that includes works by Owen Wister, Loren D. Estleman, and Bill Gulick...

  • Breakdown

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 19

    The "nameless" San Francisco detective and his partner Eberhardt are trying to prove that their client Thomas Lujack did not mow down his business partner with his car. Although he suspects his client's guilt early on, the 58-year-old gumshoe spends ...

  • Classic Tales of Horror and the Supernatural

    Here is a masterful collection of 41 of the genre's finest--and most chilling--tales, It is an indispensable volume of horror and the beyond, compiled by three of the field's top contributors and authorities and introduced by the current undisputed m...

  • The Montanans

  • Stacked Deck

    This Author's Choice collection by prolific, award-winning author Bill Pronzini was first published by Mystery Scene Press. It includes seven short stories and an introduction from the author, including stories involving the Nameless Detective.<...

  • Felonious Assaults

  • The Jade Figurine

    A freelance charter pilot on uneasy terms with the police but greatly respected by the underworld, Dan Connell turns down a bundle of cash to smuggle a jade carving of a bird out of Singapore--which doesn't make the thieves or the authorities happy. ...

  • Quarry

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 20

    BEDROCK FEAR Grady Haas is a woman possessed, driven by panic, numbed by shock. What happened to her? And is this a case for the "Nameless Detective" or a psychiatrist? Reluctantly, "Nameless" answers her father's desperate summons and agrees to ...

  • Tom

    in Cat Crimes 2
    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    From the pens of today's most prolific, popular, and feline-fancying mystery writers comes CAT CRIMES 2, a chilling collection of original stories that will leave cat- and mystery-lovers purring for more. Inside you'll encounter the Bogart drawl of P...

  • Combat!

    A collection of World War II stories recaptures the blood and confusion of combat, with contributions from Norman Mailer, James Michener, C. S. Forester, Alistair MacLean, Ray Bradbury, David Goodis, and many others. Original....

  • Dead Run

    For a mystery, Dead Run will be hard to beat ???The New York Times Book ReviewTraveling by ship from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Dan Connell discovers he is being pursued by ruthless killers. Pronzini is the master of the shivery, spine-tingling it-co...

  • Epitaphs

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 21

    The bitterest of woes is to remember old happy days. At least that's what old man Pietro Lombardi thinks. He's got la miseria and can't even play a peaceful round of Sunday bocce with his friends at Aquatic Park. That is, until he sees the Nameless D...

  • Black Wind

    in Women on the Edge

    Women become the protagonists in an anthology of fourteen mystery stories by Sara Paretsky, Barbara Michaels, Nancy Pickard, Loren D. Estleman, John D. MacDonald, and Bill Pronzini, among others. Reprint....

  • Day of the Moon

    The West Coast crime cartel known as "the Organization" has been beset by a series of problems: members are being murdered and merchandise hijacked. In walks troubleshooter Flagg, whose methods are those of a sharp-witted detective rather than a crim...

  • Carmody's Run

    Carmody--a sometimes detective who also works as a freelance bodyguard and smuggler--operates off the Mediterranean island of Majorca, where he deals with thieves, smugglers, murderers, and other desperate men...

  • Demons

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 22

    Searching for Nedra Merchant, a missing femme fatale whose trail of broken hearts includes a politician, a lawyer, and a psychopath, the Nameless Detective uncovers a web of sexual obsession that strikes a bit too close to his own heart. Reprint....

  • Starvation Camp

    After months of a harsh Yukon winter, a man's hunger can drive him to desperation, delusion, even murder ...When Corporal Zachary McQuestion veered off his icy route in the Yukon, he was eagerly anticipating the warmth and comfort he'd always found a...

  • With an Extreme Burning

    In a story of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary and deadly circumstances, two friends are faced with the possibility that someone they know well--for reasons they cannot fathom--is plotting to destroy them and everyone they love...

  • Hardcase

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 23

    Fresh from his recent marriage, the Nameless Detective returns to what appears to be a routine investigation, an adoption case.  While searching through the effects of her recently deceased mother, 23-year-old Melanie Ann Aldrich discovers some pap...

  • Blue Lonesome

    Jim Messenger is a CPA who hates his job, loves jazz, and can't forget a woman he has seen eating at the Harmony Café. She goes by the name of Janet Mitchell, and when he introduces himself, her only comment is, "It won't do you any good." When s...

  • Spadework

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 25

  • Sentinels

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 24

    A "worried mother" job takes "Nameless" to a California backwater, where college student Allison McDowell has disappeared with her mysterious new boyfriend on a drive from Oregon to San Francisco. And behind a simple missing-persons case lies a ...

  • Incident In A Neighborhood Tavern

    in Modern Treasury of Great Detective and Murder Mysteries

    No hit-or-miss anthology, this first-rate collection of 25 contemporary mysteries offers a cross-section view of the American detective, suspense and mystery short-story worlds. Gorman, editor of Mystery Scene, gathers the works of such masters as To...

  • A Wasteland of Strangers

    Edgar Award Finalist: A mysterious stranger sparks mistrust and violence in a gripping tale of small-town prejudice, jealousy, and murder from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini. The arrival of big, ugly John C. Faith in a battered...

  • Panic!

    Broke and fleeing his shattered marriage, Jack Lennox takes a bus towards the southwestern desert. He takes work with Al Perrins, only to see two well-dressed men murder Perrins the following morning. But they see Lennox, and he becomes both hunter a...

  • Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories

    Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Included are thirty-six superbly suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintes...

  • Illusions

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 26

    In his 24th and most intriguing appearance, the "Nameless Detective" finds himself involved in two intricate and emotional investigations. The first is intensely personal: the unexpected death of his estranged friend and former partner, Eberhardt. Al...

  • Booby Trap

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 27

  • Boobytrap

    A vacation in the mountains by the Nameless Detective of San Francisco is spoilt when a bomber appears, seeking revenge on the host's family. Nameless is staying with the family of a district attorney who sent the bomber to jail....

  • Sleuths

    For over thirty years, Bill Pronzini has created fictional sleuths. The most famous dubbed the Nameless Detective appeared in twenty-five novels. But there are many others like Fergus O'Hara who, with his wife Hattie, plies his trade at the time of C...

  • Masques

    The utter insanity of Mardi Gras becomes all too real for Steve Giroux after an anonymous phone call commands him to relinquish evidence of a brutal murder, and he is hurled into a realm of voodoo, black magic, and unspeakable evil. Original....

  • Nothing but the Night

    For some people, the night is a cloak, helping them to hide. For others, it's a bright light, exposing things better left unseen. The lives of Cam Gallagher and Nick Hendryx have taken separate courses; their roads will cross and cross again, with in...

  • Night Freight

    A horrifying collection of twenty-six chilling horror stories spanning nearly three decades in the author's award-winning career, includes several tales of horror and suspense that have never before been published in book form. Original....

  • Crazybone

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 28

    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 S...

  • Oddments

    Plump, nondescript Theodore Conway works as a file clerk in a Manhattan law firm. His passion is collecting memorabilia related to the pulp-fiction heroes of his youth, especially The Shadow. Then one day this quiet little man learns that he, too, ha...

  • The Tormentor

    After the death of his wife in a freak accident, Dix Mallory is tormented by a series of anonymous telephone calls, a campaign of terror that continues to escalate into a nightmare of violence, suspicion, and death. Original....

  • All the Long Years

    Filled with adventure, action, and excitement, a collection of fourteen short stories, vibrantly bringing the Old West to life, features a colorful cast of characters ranging from lawmen and cowhands to saddle makers and traveling dentists. Reprint....

  • In an Evil Time

    Jack Hollis has finally decided to murder his daughter's viscious, abusive, and powerful husband, David Rakubian, but after David does not meet Jack at the rendevous point at which he is to be murdered and is found dead at his home, Jack begins a sea...

  • Duel at Gold Buttes

    THE BLOODY TERRITORY! Drifter Jim Glencannon rode into Wild Horse where he encountered Clay Brewer. His old friend was fast losing cash to Jersey Jack Halacy's traveling casino. Suspecting a fixed game, the two men challenged the dealer. Jim wound u...

  • Border Fever

    Meet Oak M'CandlissHardened and wordwise Ranger Oak M'Candliss was a loner. His brothers had been massacred during a Chiricahuas border raid and the wife he adored had been murdered by a pack of vicious outlaws. All he had left was a devotion to ju...

  • More Oddments

    More Oddments features fourteen more detective stories featuring characters such as Fergus O'Hara and the Nameless Detective. The stories included in this collection are:Fergus O'Hara, Detective ChipOpportunityA Craving for OriginalityOne of Those C...

  • Bleeders

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 29

    When Jay Cohalan, who is being blackmailed by his unhappy wife, is murdered and the blackmail money and the wife both turn up missing, the Nameless Detective descends into San Francisco's underworld of drug dealers, extortionists, and other "bleeders...

  • Step to the Graveyard Easy

    Matthew Cape has no time to worry about his fears; caught up in events not of his making, but inescapable, he does things he's never dared and goes places he's only dreamed about. He's given up everything he ever had, but nothing at all of what he is...

  • Charlie Chan in the Pawns of Death

    "Checkmate!" That was the last word uttered to Charlie Chan and Prefect of Police Claude DeBevre by a dying reporter. The man had been murdered . . . stabbed to death and left to die in a vacant hotel room. It is the second murder in 24 hours at the ...

  • Spook

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 30

    After a near brush with death, Nameless once again enters the dark underbelly of San Francisco to search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who was brutally slain, a search that leads him to a small California town rife wit...

  • Scenarios

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 31

    Shamus Award-winning author

    Few writers have ever had such a loyal reader following as Bill Pronzini and his "Nameless Detective." In terms of life on the printed page, the "Nameless Detective" celebrates his 35th birthday in 2003. The fourteen st...

  • Burgade's Crossing

    Featuring eight classic westerns, this exciting collection includes Burgade's Crossing, in which a U.S. Secret Service agent-turned-private detective and his gorgeous partner are confronted by counterfeiters, gamblers, and assassins along San...

  • On Account of Darkness and Other Stories

    Bill Pronzini is one of the most highly acclaimed mystery authors writing today. Barry N. Malzberg exploded onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with incendiary novels and short stories that took the craft of speculative fiction to a completel...

  • The Alias Man

    The women in his life call him the Alias Man. From Santa Fe to Pennsylvania, from Vancouver to San Francisco, he has seduced and charmed, stolen and disappeared, leaving unbearable hurt in his wake. Then his three most recent victims-- Jessie, Sar...

  • The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels: 12 Espionage Masterpieces

    Spanning more than 75 years of espionage writing in USA and the UK, here are gripping tales by classic writers in the field including W. Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming, Leslie Charteris, and Erle Stanley Gardner. They are presented complete and unabri...

  • Nightcrawlers

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 32

    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.Th...

  • Mourners

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 33

    EVERYONE IS MOURNING SOMETHING Nameless has seen enough death in his years; spending his time watching someone drive to several funerals a day, funerals for people Nameless doesn't even know, is more than he can take. Then the bits and pieces ...

  • The Crimes of Jordan Wise

    Jordan Wise is a mild-mannered accountant with a large San Francisco
    engineering firm in the late 1970s. By his own admission, the first
    thirty-four years of his life were dull, empty. But that all changes
    when he meets and falls in lo...

  • Coyote and Quarter-Moon

  • Savages

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 34

    The police said it was an accident, the dead woman's sister said it was murder... and that she knew who did it. Nameless isn't certain, but the more he learns about Nancy Mathias's life, the more inclined he is to accept the likelihood of murder--esp...

  • Snowbound // Games

    SNOWBOUND When the Sacramento heist turns sour, the three gunmen head for the Sierra Nevada mountains to the safe house they had set up for themselves in the small village of Hidden Valley. There is a storm approaching and the residents there are pre...

  • Dago Red: Tales of Dark Suspense

    Bill Pronzini invades the Ramble House Sanctuary of Loons with a collection of 22 excursions into the darkest heart of noir. From the perils of familial love in "Dago Red" to the deadly TV sports of "Olaf and the Merchandisers" Pronzini runs you thro...

  • Fever

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 35

    Nameless had told Mitchell Krochek that he'd do whatever he could to find his missing wife, Janice. She'd run away before -- propelled by a gambling fever that grew ever higher -- and Mitch had always taken her back. This time, when Nameless, his par...

  • The Other Side of Silence

    The sunbaked expanse of Death Valley is a great place to visit but a bad place to die in this breathtaking thriller from acclaimed master of suspense fiction Bill Pronzini Rick Fallon has reached the breaking point. His wife left after their son’s ...

  • Schemers

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 36

    A new Nameless Detective story from the 2008 Mystery Writers of America Grand Master...A locked room mystery that goes from stolen books to stolen lives and the hunt for a phantom stalker with a penchant for pouring acid to make his point give Namele...

  • Small Felonies

    This is a collection of fifty short stories by veteran mystery and crime writer Bill Pronzini, best known as fhe creator of 'The Nameless Detective' series. This collection crosses over a broad range of styles and characters, settings and plots, sho...

  • Quincannon's Game

    John Frederick Quincannon, a former United States Secret Service agent, and Sabina Carpenter, one of the first female Pinkerton operatives, joined forces to form the firm of CARPENTER AND QUINCANNON, PROFESSIONAL DETECTIVE SERVICES. Their various cas...

  • Betrayers

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 37

    We're told that there are seven deadly sins; not on the list is the deadliest of them all: Betrayal. For each of the detectives at the agency, a betrayal--personal, against a child, against the elderly--becomes not only the driving force behind an in...

  • The Hidden

    A series of seemingly random murders along a fifty-mile stretch of the rugged northern California coast, committed by an unknown dubbed by the media the Coastline Killer. A young couple with marital problems, Shelby and Jay Macklin, who decide to spe...

  • Masters of Horror & the Supernatural

    A spellbinding collection of the best stories in the genre of horror and the supernatural. With works by Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Silverberg, H.G Wells and dozens more, this indispensable compilation will show that anything can happen ...

  • Beyond the Grave

    The bestselling author of "The McCone Files" teams up with the creator of the "Nameless Detective" for a collaborative mystery that bridges the San Franciscos of 1894 and 1986. Muller and Pronzini masterfully parallel the investigations of turn-of-th...

  • Camouflage

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 38

    Nameless may not like David Virden, but the case is simple enough: find his ex-wife -- and they know where she is. Deliver some papers to her and it's all done. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and ...

  • Games

    A new thriller in the tradition of Pronzini's Snowbound, "a shivery, spine- tingling it-could-happen suspense story... a real rouser." -- Publishers Weekly

    The rich and powerful Jackman family had always had an obsession with successful gam...

  • Tales of the Dead

  • Hellbox

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 39

    Bill, the "Nameless Detective," and his wife Kerry were in the Sierra foothills, just outside of Six Pines, falling in love with a cabin. It was all perfect, until Kerry went missing. They’d seen Balfour at breakfast at the diner and Kerry remem...

  • Small Felonies: Fifty Short Mystery Stories

    This is a collection of fifty short stories by veteran mystery and crime writer Bill Pronzini, best known as fhe creator of 'The Nameless Detective' series. This collection crosses over a broad range of styles and characters, settings and plots, sho...

  • Pumpkin

    The first Amanda Sutter knew of the pumpkin, the strange pumpkin, was a day in late September. Something was wrong with the pumpkin. Amanda felt it. There was an aura, a Sense of something emanating from the pumpkin that made her uneasy, brought prim...

  • Femme

    A Nameless Detective Mystery

    Femme fatale. French for "deadly woman." You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. But they're not just products of literature, film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society,...

  • Kinsmen

    A Nameless Detective Mystery

    Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went missing without a trace. Whatever happene...

  • Nemesis

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 40

    Young, newly rich Verity Daniels claims to be receiving threatening demands for money from a mysterious caller. When Jake Runyon agrees to investigate, it seems a relatively simple matter to expose the extortionist by setting a trap for him. The c...

  • Freebooty

    Set in San Francisco and environs during the Civil War, it introduces Fergus O'Hara, the most roguish new detective in years, and his equally-engaging wife Hattie. Their first case is a complicated and wacky one. Among other people, places and things...

  • Strangers

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 41

    Cody Hatcher is the kind of teenager you don't want your kids hanging with. That's the book on him and it's why the citizens of Mineral Springs have no problem at all believing that he's guilty of three rapes. His mother, Cheryl, an old lover of Name...

  • Cat's Paw

    A Nameless Detective mystery story that starts with the theft of exotic animals from San Francisco's Fleishhacker Zoo…and ends with murder.

    Expensive and endangered animals are being stolen from the Felishhacker Zoo. At the behest of a prev...

  • Strangers in the Fog and Cain's Mark

    Two Bill Pronzini mysteries in one collection

    "Strangers in the Fog"

    A fascinating, dark, and gripping "Nameless Detective" story.

    "Cain's Mark"

    A botched hit and blackmail turn to revenge and betrayal in this gripping myst...

  • The Cemetery Man: And Other Darkside Tales

    Bill Pronzini, famed for his "Nameless" detective series, displays his darker side--along with his remarkable breadth--in this stunning collection of 19 stories. We meet an array of grasping characters who seem to inhabit their own nightmares. A hapl...

  • Wishful Thinking

  • Wildfire

    Logspur is a small and dangerously isolated community in the rugged logging country of northern California. The town's lumber baron, Henry Johnston, is a fanatic right-wing paramilitarist who has a cache of illegal weapons and ammo in two old freight...

  • Vixen

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 42

    When Nameless is hired by Cory Beckett, a beautiful young woman who claims to be a model, to find her missing brother, Kenneth, it seems to be a routine matter. Kenneth has fled San Francisco in a drug-induced panic to avoid trial on a charge of stea...

  • Dago Red

    TALES OF DARK SUSPENSE

    Bill Pronzini invades the Ramble House Sanctuary of Loons with a collection of 22 excursions into the darkest heart of noir. From the perils of familial love in "Dago Red" to the deadly TV sports of "Olaf And the Mer...

  • On Account of Darkness

    Bill Pronzini is one of the most highly acclaimed mystery authors writing today. Barry N. Malzberg exploded onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with incendiary novels and short stories that took the craft of speculative fiction to a completel...

  • Zigzag

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 42.5

    Zigzag is an original novella, in which a safe and simple accident investigation becomes the unraveling of a twisted murder scheme. ...

  • The Edgar Winners: 33rd Annual Anthology of the Mystery Writers of America

  • The Violated

    Bill Pronzini is crime-writing royalty. His more than eighty published novels have won or been nominated for Edgar, Hammett, Anthony, Shamus, and Macavity awards--a clean sweep of the crime fiction award field--and received rave reviews from critics....

  • Endgame

    A Nameless Detective Mystery - 43

    The Nameless Detective has taken many cases over the years… and this is one for the books. Or rather, two cases that will test his agency's resources. Love is in the air...more to the point, love gone awry. One case involves a woman whose husba...

  • The Bags of Tricks Affair

    A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery - 6

    THE BAGS OF TRICKS AFFAIR is the latest charming historical mystery in Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini's detective series. A conman always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecti...

  • Give-A-Damn Jones

    Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini debuts a thrilling western with expert storytelling and a mysterious hero who will appeal to Pronzini's Nameless fans. Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or card...

  • The Flimflam Affair

    A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery - 7

    THE FLIMFLAM AFFAIR is the latest charming historical mystery in Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini's detective series. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new...

  • Tricks and Treats

    30 CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES GOOD TO THE LAST LINEThe McGuffin has long been a staple tool in any crime and mystery writer’s arsenal. A perfectly placed last line of a short story can pull together subtle plot threads into a devastating dénouement...

  • The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

    Bill Pronzini’s riveting western mystery, The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, takes on the modern world with old-fashioned violence--and his Peaceful Valley is anything but… Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that’s just how She...

  • The Stolen Gold Affair

    A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery - 8

    The Stolen Gold Affair is the latest charming historical mystery in Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini's detective series. In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, Quincannon goes undercover as a newly-h...

  • The Paradise Affair

    A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery - 9

    Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Bill Pronzini’s next historical mystery The Paradise Affair, perfect for fans of Peaky Blinders and The Alienist.The latest Carpenter & Quincannon mystery: “Attractive characters, a finely tuned plot, a...

  • A Little Red Book of Murder Stories

    The 12th offering in the Little Book series two is by Bill Pronzini.A full-time professional writer since 1969, Bill Pronzini has published more than 80 novels, including seven in collaboration with his wife, Marcia Muller, and 46 in his popular Name...

  • Small Felonies 2

    SMALL FELONIES 250 short-short stories told in first-person, third-person, present as well as past tense, and in epistolary format; tales of detection (three feature long-running series character, the Nameless Detective), psychological suspense, hist...

  • High Concepts

    HIGH CONCEPTS ... an eclectic mix of science fiction and fantasy, from the darkly serious to the trickily humorous, in a broad range of subject matter. Tales of space exploration and adventures on other worlds. Tales of aliens among us. Interpolation...

  • The Hanging Man & Other Western Stories

    Bill Pronzini has been writing westerns throughout his long and varied career, and this volume collects the author's best. Here are stories peopled by such familiar figures as lawmen, ranchers, cowhands, gamblers, detectives, newspapermen, gunfighter...

  • The Arbor House Necropolis

    • / Horror
    • Buy Buy

  • Werewolf

    • / Horror
    • Buy Buy

Award-Winning Books by Bill Pronzini

Booby Trap
1998 Shamus Award -- P.I. Novel
Hoodwink
1981 Shamus Award -- P.I. Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Bill Pronzini has published 173 books.

Bill Pronzini does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Hanging Man & Other Western Stories, was published in December 2024.

The first book by Bill Pronzini, The Snatch, was published in January 1971.

Yes. Bill Pronzini has 2 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
Author Series
Multi-Author Series
Top Authors in Police Procedural
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