Bill Pronzini

"The latest Carpenter & Quincannon mystery: "Attractive characters, a finely tuned plot, and fascinating snippets of California history. Who could ask for more?"--Publishers Weekly on The Stolen Gold Affair Quincannon's pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer's assets dovetails nicely with Sabina's vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently...

Carpenter and Quincannon Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. Sabina and John will protect their clients, doing what is necessary to run the dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes that involves brute force. Other times, a more subtle touch is needed. Professor A. Vargas, medium extraordinaire, and his partner, Annabelle, don't use picks to open locked doors, and most certainly don't...

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 investigation, but the source of the kind of resolve that cannot be derailed by threats of any kind. Tamara's case began as something personal but explodes as her investigation of her former lover Lucas Zeller...

Agreeing to investigate threats by a mysterious extortionist against a newly rich young woman, Jake Runyon makes a series of surprise discoveries that cause him to be wrongfully accused of a crime and his employers to be subjected to a vicious legal vendetta.

In Echo Park, in the small town of Santa Rita, California, the mutilated body of Martin Torrey is found by two passersby. A registered sex offender, Torrey has been a suspect in a string of recent rapes, and instant suspicion for his murder falls on the relatives and friends of the women attacked. Police chief Griffin Kells and detective Robert Ortiz are under increasing pressure from the public and from a mayor demanding results in a case that has...

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 remembered his name...PR people are like that. Which was unfortunate, because when she ran into him along the trail on that sunny afternoon and called him by name, he panicked. And, that's when Bill's nightmare...

Two novellas and two short stories featuring Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Bill Pronzini's iconic Nameless Detective! Zigzag is an original novella, in which a safe and simple accident investigation becomes the unraveling of a twisted murder scheme. Grapplin, which first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, deals with the kind of missing person case that can end in only one of two ways, closure or heartbreak. In the second short,...

A desperate father's world explodes when his plan to eliminate his abusive son-in-law goes shockingly awry in this riveting thriller from a true American master of suspense fiction  Many people would love to see powerful San Francisco attorney David Rakubian dead, but none more than his father-in-law, Jack Hollis. Rakubian has threatened to kill Hollis's daughter and her toddler son from an earlier marriage if she tries to leave him. Enough, Hollis...

A series of seemingly random murders have been happening along a fifty mile stretch of the rugged northern California coast, committed by an unknown dubbed the "Coastline Killer." A young couple with marital problems, Shelby and Jay Macklin, decide to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's at a friend's remote coastal cottage. Two couples in a neighboring home, whose relationships are thick with festering menace, and a fierce winter storm...