Bill Pronzini
1) Mourners
Nameless had seen enough death in his years; spending his time watching someone drive to several funerals a day, funerals for people he didn't know, was more than he could take. And he had a non-professional problem of his own: his relationship with his wife, Kerry, had hit a wall, and nothing he did got him over it and to the other side. There was one possibility, one thing he'd done (or not done), but knowing that didn't seem to help. Also not
...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 century. While the future is unclear, Sabina and John know one thing for certain: they will protect their clients from flimflammers, thieves, and murderers, and do whatever it takes
...The Bags of Tricks Affair is the latest charming historical mystery in MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini's detective series.
A con man always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecting until they get taken. When that happens, they turn to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to recover their money and what's left of their dignity, and perhaps even to save their lives.
When
...In The Bughouse Affair, former Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter and her detective partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, undertake what initially appear to be two unrelated investigations. Sabina's case involves the hunt for a ruthless lady "dip" who uses fiendish means to relieve her victims of their valuables at Chutes Amusement Park and other crowded places.
Quincannon, meanwhile, is after a slippery housebreaker
...5) Spook
Shaken after a hair's-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he's not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco's shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but Pronzini, working at the top of his form, takes his seasoned private-eye hero to a new phase of a still-evolving
...6) Quarry
Old Man Hass is concerned by the near-catatonic behavior of his daughter, Grady. The young woman showed up at his doorstep a few days earlier, refused to admit that anything was wrong, and has been wandering around the farm, not talking and barely eating. The Nameless Detective thinks the old farmer would have been better off calling a psychiatrist—but he's at least willing to ask a few questions. As Nameless begins to investigate, he discovers
...7) Savages
8) Bleeders
A simple case of blackmail gets lethally complicated when "Nameless" exposes a nasty scam that involves junior accounts executive Jay Cohalan, his unhappy wife, and a mistress with a serious drug problem. It's the kind of case Nameless likes, because bleeders—the blackmailers, extortionists, small-time grifters, and other opportunists who prey on the weak and gullible—sit near the top of his most-worthless-human-beings list. But soon
...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 stealing a valuable necklace from the alcoholic wife of the man for whom he works, wealthy yachtsman Andrew Vorhees. When agency operative Jake Runyon locates and questions the frightened young man, Cory's
...10) Epitaphs
So what if Nameless can't get his girlfriend, Kerry, to marry him? So what if he can't talk his partner, Eberhardt, out of his bitter funk? Skies are sunny, and the Nameless Detective wants them to stay that way. So he decides to do an old man a favor and find his missing granddaughter, Gianna.
But no one said it would be easy. It seems Gianna's roommate is turning tricks, and Nameless' search quickly leads him to a pimp, a murder, and into
...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 hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible.
Meanwhile, Sabina finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon's wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate
...Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops. It's just another day for the Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services.
Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take the detectives from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens.
John Quincannon must search a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of
...For the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, stopping extortionists is not only grand, but excitingly lucrative.
When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention.
The questions her partner John Quincannon
...Can the true identity of the Sherlock Holmes imposter be revealed at last?
Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon are no stranger to mysteries. In the five years since they opened Carpenter and Quinncannon, Professional Detective Services, they have solved dozens, but one has eluded even them: Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the madman claiming his identity, who keeps showing up with a frustrating—though admittedly useful—knack for
...A debutante's missing body, murder most foul, and weird spectral lights in the fog make for a thrilling gaslight-era tale of mystery and detection.
In 1895 San Francisco young debutantes don't commit suicide at festive parties, particularly not under the eye of Sabina Carpenter. But Virginia St. Ives evidently did, leaping from a foggy parapet in a shimmer of ghostly light. The seemingly impossible disappearance of her body creates an even
...Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas.”
Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist.
A training session for department-store...