It is always problematic when you come late to a long running and well established series in any genre as nuances and subtleties of relationships,familiar to veteran afficionados of the series may well be lost to newcomers.The series about the Namelss Detective ,now numbering nigh on 30 titles,is a good instance where I am concerned."Boobytrap"is only my second taste of the series and there are echoes of his past cases in the book,and in particular details of how these have shaped his current world view,Nameless does age in the series and his increasing fallibility,physical and emotional is a key undercurrent to events.

In the book he is on vacation in the High Sierra Lakes ,with the son(Chuck)and wife(Marion)of local DA Tom Dixon.They are to be joined by Dixon on the conclusion of urgent court matters in San Francisco,There is a large problem however,for Dixon is the target of "Latimer"a recently paroled bomber/boobytrapper and a man intent on revenge against all those instrumental in sending him to prison,including Dixon."Latimer"is in the area ,in the guise of a vacationer and quite prepared to kill in order to wreak his revenge on Dixon.
The allure of the book for me is less in its thrillerish and crime elements but in its meditations on how life and its
tribulations has changed Nameless by making him aware of his own mortality.Sickened by the deaths in his own life he gives up fishing not wishing to add to the burden of death.Namelss reflects bitterly on a society that spawns men like Latimer who see revenge for proper punishment as their due.Love all too often seems like the most fragile and tenuous barrier to encroaching darkness be this individual or societal.Nameless is not a hardboiled private eye but warm ,human and a good man who has paid a bitter price for survival .Nameless is a good man,professionally and personally and I recommend the book to you.

If you haven't met Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective", this novel is a good one to start with. Pronzini's writing is clear, and he knows how to keep the reader on the edge of his seat. If you read this one you will soon want to read all his other "Nameless Detective" novels.

If you haven't met "Nameless" yet, or encountered the work of Bill Pronzini, you are in for a rare treat. Start 'Boobytrap' and you can begin planning how to spend your reading time over the upcoming holidays--by starting from the beginning of this superb series. Pronzini's books are very well-plotted, contain complex and engaging characters, and are written in a fluid but muscular style balanced with refreshing touches of humor. Pronzini does the traditions of the detective genre proud, while still remaining very much his own man. Mystery writing doesn't get much better than this. Kick back and enjoy.

Congratulations! Nameless has tied the knot and is on the way of beginning a new chapter in his life. Forget about the fact that he was sweating like a pig before "choking" out his " I do." And let's not mention his less than spectacular performance during his wedding night. Nameless is just his plain old self and has a case to work on before he goes on his real honeymoon.

His case is easy, simple and won't take long. Uh, oh. Forget about long. A case of him trying to find the birth parents of an adopted woman becomes more complex than you would think. No one wants to talk about it and Nameless finds himself up a wall that will lead to more trouble and impact on this newlywed's bride.

Pronzini spins a tale in which some things are best left alone. Nameless is also challenged to come into the 20th century with computers and an assistant who can stand toe to toe with our aging investigator. This was a delightful story in seeing a man set in his ways coming to terms with the needed changes in his life. It is also a story that makes you wonder if there are some information in one's life that should be kept secret. Find out as you read this enjoyable Nameless thriller.

In one of the best, and certainly most under-appreciated, mystery series around. Why aren't these books bigger sellers? Why aren't the new entires available in paperback? One tip on reading Nameless: Read the books in order. The character changes and develops more than almost anyone in the field.

Bill Pronzini's continuing series of the Nameless Detective who is drawn into another puzzling case of abuse and murder. Pronzini is excellent in building suspense and is superb in using simply dialogue to "paint" a character, to reveal the dark and disturbing side of people. Prejudice-yes! I love this series and hope the detective continues to take me on his twisting adventures as I keep-my-eye-on-that-book-so-I-don't-lose-it (my no.1 indicator of affection).

In the beginning of this book I found the changing of viewpoints every other chapter disruptive of the flow of the story, but this improved as the book went on. Overall, this is a good book and I would recommend it.

I prefer the Sharon McCone books written only by Marcia Muller, but this book is definitely important to the history of Sharon McCone and is worth reading.

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini team up with their characters Sharon McCone and "the nameless detective" to create an intriguing mystery. Sharon and the detective she calls Wolf meet in San Diego at a convention for private investigators. Sharon is also pleased to see an old boss of hers who is now head of security at the hotel where she's staying. When Sharon's friend falls over a balcony, she and Wolf decide that it is no accident and they set about to prove that there has been foul play. Sharon and Wolf take turns telling the story and they each work on bits and pieces of the murder plus other mysterious happenings which seem to be related. This book has a deliciously convoluted plot and a mystery which Muller and Pronzini develop to a crescendo and then reveal to the reader bit by bit. The addition of the character Wolf is a nice departure for this series, and it's interesting to catch a glimpse of McCone's family as well.

Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller are my 2 favorite mystery writers working today. "Double" offers both Sharon McCone and the Nameless Detective working together. They team up to investigate the murder of Elaine Picard, a former friend of McCone, head of security at the Casa del Ray hotel in San Diego where a private investigator's convention is being held. McCone and Nameless (whom McCone calls "Wolf") alternate chapters. This novel sizzles with action and it is one of my favorites of both Pronzini and Muller. I'm hoping that one day the husband and wife team of Pronzini and Muller will write another joint venture featuring Sharon McCone and the Nameless Detective. An excellent novel that is highly recommended.

I found this book very enjoyable and it moved well, its not slow on the get go, I also liked the ending, very different from his other books, which usually end with the guy getting the girl in the end, this time they.... enuf said (: And I liked the mention of a New Zealander, Cheers Bova...:

This was a book I just happened to look at because it had a cool cover and decent premise, so I decided to give it a shot. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining and how fast-paced it was - the kind of book you can read in one sitting. In addition, the book has a good, surprising ending - I don't want to spoil it for you. Peackeepers is the kind of book that should be made into a movie - although maybe they should wait a while because, on the surface, the plot seems similar to the movie The Peacemaker with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman (although the Peacekeepers is a much better story, trust me). Either way, even though this isn't Bova' most popular book, it's worth checking out.

Eberhardt, Nameless's police friend calls him to a crime scene. Does he know the victim? He never saw her in his life. Why then is his business card in her possesion? Nameless hasn't an answer but the question nags at him even though he has another case to keep him occupied.

Nothing can go smoothly for Nameless. His twenty-four hour surveillance job ends up with a murder but the suspect didn't commit the crime but is charged anyway. Nameless does some more digging and before he knows it three more murders occur all of which point to him and the orginal victim. How will Nameless be able to unravel this labyrinth of mayhem and murder as he moves through its corridors.

Labyrinth takes us through that valley called coincidence, syncronicity and intuition. How is it that unrelated incidents of foul play are linked together in a haphazard way. Nameless tries to use his cold logic to bring the pieces of the puzzle together but finds himself frustrated at every turn. He is forced to think outside the box if he is ever to solve these series of crime. Like Nameless, you too will find yourself looking for the "connections" which makes this work of Pronzini's more fun and challenging.

One of the oldest gambits in PI fiction is the dead body that turns up with the detective's business card in a pocket. Pronzini breathes new life into that scenario with "Labyrinth." Nameless has no idea who the dead girl is -- how did she get his card? This book has tons of action and excitement; thank goodness it's short enough to devour in one or two sittings. Fans of the PI genre have got to check out Nameless. The books are best read in order, so it's a major shame that they're out of print -- but they are certainly worth tracking down.

Leisure has really turned around their horror line and it's similar to the resurrection Dell did when they brought out their Abyss line.

Pronzini scores a winner here, especially with "Peekaboo" and "The Monster."

A very readable collection of interesting short stories that are guaranteed to keep you turning those pages.

Finally -- a short story collection from Bill Pronzini that includes his mystery, thriller, AND horror tales. Lots of great stuff in here, including the classic title tale, "The Coffin Trimmer", and "The Monster," which has appeared in mystery year's best books (although it's more suspense than mystery). It's a sizable collection (26 stories) and while it bounces all over the place in style and tone, you'll easily find quite a few stories in here that stick with you. It's unfortunate that mystery and thriller fans will probably miss this when it's shelved in the "horror" section, since only a handful of the stories are outright horror, but lovers of dark fiction should pick it up.

Bill Pronzini is marvellous!
All 26 stories in night freight will definetly keep you awake all night.These tales are so naturally written that you would definetly wonder that something similar could might as well happen to you too.
This book is a must if you are a lover of intrigue, mystery and suspense.......
Go ahead....include this excellent book in your collection! three cheers to Bill Pronzini.

" Nameless" is at the top of his game when solving murder mysteries. Recent murders are difficult but not unsolvable. This time Nameless is called upon to solve a murder that happened four decades ago. Called to do the impossible, he takes the case merely because the victim was a pulp writer. Nameless of course is is a pulp fan. Pronzini gives us a fair story as we follow Nameless in his quest of trying to quell the questions of a neurotic son determined to find out how his writer-father really died. Was it a suicide or murder? Come with Nameless as he attempts to uncover this mystery but in the meantime he must deal with his partner's brainless girlfriend and her impact on his beloved Kerry. This is not one of Prozini's best in the Nameless series but it will hold your attention.

Michael Kiskadon hires Nameless to find out the truth about his father's suicide in 1949. Kiskadon was only four years old in 1949, and he had always been told that his father had died in Korea. Michael's father was Harmon Crane, who had been a popular pulp magazine author before graduating to slicker magazines and novels. Before the suicide, Harmon Crane had been despondent and drinking heavily for several weeks. A suicide note was found at the scene. With these few clues, Nameless sets out to get some answers.Eberhardt and Nameless are partners in this story since Eberhardt is now retired from the police department. Eberhardt's girl friend Wanda Jaworski provides enough humor to make the book worthwhile.

"Bones" is one of the best of the "Nameless Detective" mysteries by Bill Pronzini. No one can place the reader in the action quite like Pronzini. Michael Kiskadon hires "Nameless" to investigate the apparent suicide of his father, Harmon Crane, who was a former writer of pulp fiction, a favorite topic of "Nameless" and the author. There are some light moments, especially involving his partner, Eberhardt, his well-endowed girlfriend, Wanda, and "Nameless'" girlfriend, Kerry. This is an excellent addition to an excellent series.

I enjoyed the size (non-huge) & pace of this book, as well as the setting (the Nevada desert & ranch land, largely). But in a brief book, I suppose it's tough to have characters that don't seem one-dimensional. In this book, many of them do; after you've met them the first time, little else about them will come as a surprise. Still, the dialogue and descriptions are generally well done, and the progression of the main character from Grey Flannel Suit to His Own Man is interesting to watch. How WOULD somebody go about throwing their old life away for a new one, and what would bring that about? Fun questions, and this book explores them in an intriguing way.

For those who can relate to middle-aged-male angst and like to read mysteries, Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks books will probably be at least as enjoyable as Blue Lonesome.

Okay. Here's the set-up:
You are a lonely middle-aged CPA and you eat at the same places almost every day. You notice a sad looking woman, not a pretty one, mind you, just sad, and you identify with her because she is so obviously lonesome, just like our CPA.
You get the nerve up to try and speak with her, and it doesn't work. She doesn't tell you her name or anything about her. You follow her home one night and find out her name is Janet Mitchell. You are obsessed with why she's so lonely. Soon she stops coming to the restaurant and you're worried. You go visit her apartment complex and speak to the oriental landlady. She tells you that the lady is dead, committing suicide in her bathtub. Now, would you even imagine pursuing this any further? Well, James Messenger, our hero does.
Although I found the setup for this novel quite unbelievable, Pronzini manages to make it work with his wonderful prose and sense of characterizations. Needless to say, Messenger ends up in the lady's hometown of Beulah, Nevada, and finds out her real name, and learns that she had been accused of murdering her philandering husband AND her eight year old daughter. Messenger knows she didn't do it (how, you got me!). Soon, Messenger faces the expected town bullies and even the dead woman's sister. He takes a job on her ranch, and gets more and more involved with the lady and the townspeople.
The book is short, moves along well, and the ending is quite a surprise, at least to me.
It's not what I consider a great book, but if you can get past the ludicrous setup, you should enjoy it.
RECOMMENDED.

One of the things I really like about the internet is that I'm in touch with other avid readers who are on a quest for new authors. One of my "net buddies" suggested I try Blue Lonesome, a book published in 1995 by a new author named Bill Pronzini. I looked it up at amazon.com. The reviews were favorable, so I ordered it. The book is not long, only 207 pages, but the author manages to tell a compelling story that pulled me right in and didn't let me go until I'd finished the last page. The main character in Blue Lonesome is Jim Messenger. Messenger describes himself:

Name: James Warren Messenger Age: 37 Height: 6 feet Weight: 172 pounds Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Distinguishing features: None Distinguishing physical characteristics: None Employment: Certified public accountant Length of employment: 14 years Annual salary: $42,500 Possibility for advancement: Nil Interests: Jazz . . . Special skills: None Future prospects: None Mr. Average. Mr. Below Average. Mr. Blue Lonesome

Messenger's life is bland, boring and going nowhere. He's been married once, but that was 17 years prior to the story and the union lasted a mere seven months. It ended when his ex-wife announced, "It just isn't working, Jimmy, . . . I think we'd better end it right now, before things get any worse between us." Messenger's activities are pretty much limited to work, running (sporadically), listening to his vast jazz collection, and eating his evening meal at a near-by neighborhood diner, the Harmony Café. It's at the Harmony Café that Messenger first notices a fellow diner. She's always alone and seems so sad that . . . "(I)f this were the thirties and he had the talent of Jelly Roll Morton or Duke Ellington... he would write a ballad about her. And he would call it 'Blue Lonesome.'" This was the name he gave her, how he thought of her from the beginning. But it was more than just a name because she was more than just a woman alone. She was the saddest, loneliest person he'd ever encountered: pure blue, pure lonesome. . . . The naked loneliness shocked him at first. He could not take his eyes off her. She didn't notice; she saw nothing of her surroundings. . . She came, she ate, she went. But she was never really there, in a café filled with other people. She was somewhere else -- a bleak place all her own. It takes Messenger three weeks to "screw up enough courage" to speak to Ms. Blue Lonesome. She makes it perfectly clear she wants nothing to do with Messenger...or any other human, for that matter. She never even looks at him as she rebuffs his advance. The rebuff does nothing to quench Messenger's interest in the lonely woman. In fact, he becomes obsessed with her and conjures up reasons for her isolation. He even follows her home one night after dinner. "So now he knew her name and where she lived. Janet Mitchell, 2391 48th Avenue, Apartment 2-B, San Francisco. And what good was this information? What could he do with it? It was irrelevant, really. The questions that mattered to him were inaccessible, closely guarded inside her glass shell." Messenger begins to worry about his interest in Ms. Blue Lonesome: "His was not an obsessive-compulsive personality; nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It was even more frustrating because he couldn't understand what it was inside him that made him react to a stranger in this fashion. Their only common bond was loneliness, and yet hers, so acute and evidently self-destructive, repelled him as much as it fascinated him." When Janet Mitchell quits coming to the café, Messenger begins to worry. He goes to her apartment house and finds out from Mrs. Fong, the very agitated landlady that Ms. Blue Lonesome is dead. "Sunday night. Sit in bathtub, cut her wrists with a razor blade. . . My building -- killed herself in my building. Terrible. You know how terrible it is to clean up so much blood?" It is at this point that dull, boring and predictable Jim Messenger becomes unhinged. He talks to the police about Ms. Mitchell and finds that she's very possible a "Jane Doe," as there is no record of a Janet Mitchell anywhere to be found, except a safe deposit box at the local Wells Fargo bank. ". . . (s)tuffed full of cash -- better than fourteen thousand in hundred-dollar bills." Messenger re-visits the landlady, slips her forty dollars, and rummages through Ms. Blue Lonesome's meager belongings. He finds nothing to lead him to her true identity, save a pocket watch engraved with "To Davey from Pop" and a long overdue book from the Beulah Public Library. It's at this point that the book becomes a mystery, complete with a double murder, small town politics and a cast of characters that do not want Messenger poking around in their business. How Messenger gets to the truth about Ms. Blue Lonesome's past makes up the remainder of the novel, and his devotion to this woman and her memory is commendable. The only negative thing I have to say about this -- and most modern murder mysteries -- is that I wish childhood sexual abuse was not at the core of the story. I hope I'm not giving too much away, but I'm weary of being confronted with this kind of evil. I'm not putting my head in the sand like an ostrich. I just wish authors could find something else to motivate their characters to commit murder. Blue Lonesome is a compelling story, well-told and peopled with a vast array of wonderful characters. I especially liked Jim Messenger and admired his dogged determination to "get to the truth" of Ms. Blue Lonesome's story. Like Messenger, I cared about her and wanted her to rest in peace. Enjoy!

Terry H. Mathews Reviewer

Pronzini's nameless detective is by his own admission very much in his own likeness. Nameless is a big Italian who drinks beer, smokes a lot and collects pulp magazines. Pronzini claims that his hero also has the author's same personality and values. Nameless is Pronzini if Pronzini were a private detective.

Nameless verges on becoming the vigilante while working on this case, but he catches himself in time. He also operates outside the law by practicing without a license, witholding evidence, breaking and entering, and failing to report a homicide.

The Nameless Detective has lost his license and his lady; his friend on the police force, Eberhardt, has been dumped -- his wife left him for another man. How could things get worse? Well, a gunman attacks them and they both get shot. Eb lands in a coma, Nameless takes a bullet in his left arm. As his friend lies unconscious in the hospital, Nameless investigates the crime, which leads him to the narrow alleyways of San Francisco's Chinatown. Lots of great local color in this one; Nameless fans won't be disappointed.

As a writer of detective fiction, Bill Pronzini tends to wear his influences on his sleeve, perhaps never more often than in "Hoodwink." This would be true even if he didn't make repeated references in the book to "Mr. Marlowe" and "Mr. Spade." His hero, the redoubtable "Nameless" detective, attempts to solve a puzzling mystery at a pulp convention. Since Nameless is an avid pulp collector, he is in heaven even before he gets to meet some of his favorite authors and bed the bewitching daughter of one of them. The case quickly turns ugly and baffling as the author who has give Nameless his in finds himself accused of murder and Nameless must...ahem...clear his name.

Overall, I found this novel to be of average quality for Pronzini, which is to say well above average as a work of detective fiction. Pronzini isn't as quick with a metaphor as his heros "Mr. Chandler" and "Mr. Hammett," and the plot here is a bit too convoluted. Nevertheless, it is a goof read for those of us who love the hardboiled genre.

Bill Pronzini takes on the classic locked room mystery in this entry in his Nameless Detective series. It takes place at a pulp convention -- as Nameless fans know, the PI is an avid collector of old pulp detective magazines. When a man is murdered in the convention hotel, in a locked room, naturally, Nameless is called upon to solve the crime. Then a second locked room murder takes place! The solution isn't 100% satisfying, but I still enjoyed this loving look at the pulp fiction era, as well as Nameless' tender affair with the daughter of two prominent genre writers.