Paul thanks for your reply, I know what you mean about starting at the end and working forward. I really like the sentiall it was great reading. I just started hardcase it appears at first glance I'll probably be stuck on another continues reading beng. It's great.

Just finished listening to Illusions on tape. The reader enhanced the drama by reading in a sort of Sam Spade type voice. It was a great story, anyway. Enjoyed the dramatization.

Paul Bergin...

I'm back. Just finished "Double", by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini. Tol'ja I would tackle Mr. Pronzini; just didn't expect the added pleasure of the duet with his wife. I like both their characters a lot; I like the Nameless Detective especially...might have something to do with the weary San Francisco mystique gone modern. If Hammett's Continental Op reluctantly kept up with the times...that might be "Wolf". If it's not being too forward, how are you and Pronzini acquainted? Have kinda fallen in love with Muller's Sharon McCone, too. Liked the inside references to certain detective contemporaries in "Double"...am very interested in a "if Sharon met Kinsey" exploration...

Stuart, Long time no see. I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the Pronzini canon. I myself prefer his stand-alone work to the Nameless series, but that's probably because I think that he is better when he is not hemmed in by the (somewhat rigid) conventions of the private eye story. When he gives himself a little elbow room, so to speak.

If you liked DOUBLE, by all means try to find a copy of BEYOND THE GRAVE, also a collaberation with Marcia. It's quite an accomplishment. A collaberation between two people who are separated by a century. Marcia's Elena Oliverez attempts to complete an investigation that Bill's John Quincannon (a 19th century San Francisco PI) was unable to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. It sounds kind of screwball, but it works. The book may be hard to find.

As far as my friendship with Bill is concerned. I used to be in the OP/rare book business. I sold him some pulp magazines 5 or 6 years ago (he is a serious collector of pulps) and thus began a correspondence which has endured to this day. We finally met face-to-face at the 97 Bouchercon in Monterey.

Has there every been a paperback edition of Pronzini's "Blue Lonesome"? I read about this book when it came out, and haven't been able to lay hands on a copy.

Both Blue Lonesome and A Wastland of Strangers are due out in $8.95 trade paperback editions in June from Walker, which is releasing Bill's new non-Nameless title, Nothing But the Night, in hc at the same time.

Sir - I came across this page of yours by accident, and there was the name Pronzini, my all-time favorite. I wrote a letter to Bill's publisher a few years ago, and much to my surprise, Bill wrote back a two page response. Since that time, we have corresponded back and forth, and he has sent me four or five of his books, with very nice inscriptions, through the mail. He seems a great guy. Shackles is his best Nameless Detective, and he agrees.

the next Nameless Detective mystery by Bill Pronzini is titled Crazybone. It, according to Mr. Pronzini, has been delivered to Carroll & Graf, and will be published in March or April of 2000.

Since I began reading mystery novels, Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective has been the most entertaining. The cases build to ex- citing and believable climaxes, and the characterizations are well fleshed out. It is easy to feel that Nameless, Kerry, Cybil, and Eb, before he passed away, are all people that we really might know. Bill Pronzini is simply the best.