Nameless
Created by Bill Pronzini

In a master stroke (or maybe just a happy accident), Bill Pronzini never got around to giving his private eye protagonist a name. He then turnrd around and made him such a well-rounded, finely-drawn character that a name was superflous. He's the detective as Everyman. Middle-aged, out of shape, content with a cold beer and one of his beloved pulp magazines to read, NAMELESS was the first true couch potato P.I. A decent man, a good man, the kind of guy who'd stop and lend you a hand if your car broke down, or give up his seat on the bus for a pregnant lady. The kind of guy you'd play poker with, or see at a ballgame with hotdog mustard on his sleeve. Of course, he's not just another not-so-pretty face. He's also a tenacious detective, as dedicated to his profession as Hammett's Continental Op, and just as shrewd. In fact, Pronzini often pays homage to Hammett, and the whole gumshoe genre often as Nameless stalks the same San Francisco mean streets that theOp went down over sixty years ago.

Maybe not as hardboiled, or as hard-drinking, but he's no softy, either. Pronzini has definitely put his hero through the wringer-heartbreak, cancer, capture by a psychopath, betrayal by his best friend. Enough slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to fill a lifetime, which is really the whole point. This is what the series is really about-the chronicle of one man's life and times.

The Nameless series offers a wide-range of formats and styles,from short shorts, to full-blown novels, from retro-hardboiled to locked-room mysteries to good-humoured collaborations with other writers to the modern noir of 1991's "Soul's Burning." Over two dozen novels and three-score short stories since 1967.

Always a critical darling, though never true best-sellers, the twenty-sixth and latest installment in the long-running , Crazybone, ended with the intriguing possibility that Nameless and Kerry would adopt a child, suggesting a move far from the hard-edged dramas of a lone wolf private eye. In fact, Pronzini himself has let it be known, in Mystery & Detective Monthly, and perhaps elsewhere, that he is not going to write any more Nameless novels, unless he gets an exceptional offer from some publisher. However, he plans to end the series on an upbeat note , and to allow for its possible (and from this quarter, much-hoped for) revival.

And that's not to mention the numerous non-series works Pronzini's written under his own, and several other pseudonyms such as Alex Saxon, Jack Foxx and William Jeffrey. And yet, so far, Pronzini has always pulled it off. He's a master. Hoodwink grabbed the 1981 Best Novel Shamus, "Cat's Paw" nabbed the 1983 Short Story Award and he's been nominated a zillion other times.

Incidently, Bill Pronzini has always said that when imagines the Nameless Detective, he sees Bill Pronzini.

Pronzini is something of a one-man publishing machine. He's written scores of books under various aliases, including the Quincannon series, about a PI in the Old West. And, in case you're wondering why Nameless and Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone are so palsy, always teaming up, maybe the fact that their respective creators have been married for years may have something to do with it.

UNDER OATH

• In the May/June 200 issue of American Heritage, Lawrence Block was asked who The Most Overrated and Underrated Fictional Private Eyes were. He named his own Matt Scudder as the most overrated P.I., and Pronzini's Nameless as one of the the most underrated:
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  "It seems to me that all fictional private eyes are either over or underrated. If we can remember their names, they're overrated. If we can't, well, they're underrated, but how can we say who they are? As soon as we think of them, they cease to fulfill our requirement.
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  Aha!
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  There are, as it happens, two private eyes I can think of very clearly, but I can't remember their names because I never knew them in the first place. One is the creation of Dashiell Hammett, but he's not really underrated, because everybody knows him, as The Continental Op. People write doctoral theses about him, for heaven's sake, and it's axiomatic that the subject of a doctoral dissertation is never underrated.
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  But there's another guy whose name I don't know, and neither does anybody else. He's the fellow Bill Pronzini has been writing about for something like a quarter of a century. The man has been the hero of a couple of dozen spare and well-wrought novels, and he's grown and aged and gone through changes, even as you and I.
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  Critics refer to him as Nameless. But he's got a name. He just doesn't let us know what it is. "I gave my name," he'll tell us, coy as can be. If he gave us his name, we'd bandy it about all over the place, and before you knew it, he'd be overrated."

NOVELS

• The Snatch (1971)
• The Vanished (1973)
• Undercurrent (1973)
• Blowback (1977)
• Twospot (1978, co-written with Colin Wilcox)
• Labyrinth (1980)...Buy this book
• Hoodwink (1981)
• Scattershot (1982)
• Dragonfire (1982)
• Bindlestiff (1983)
• Quicksilver (1984)
• Nightshades (1984)
• Doubles (1984, co-written with Marcia Muller; featuring Sharon McCone)
• Bones (1985)
• Deadfall (1986)
• Shackles (1988)
• Jackpot (1990)
• Breakdown (1991)
• Quarry (1992)
• Epitaths (1992)
• Demons (1993)
• Hardcase (1995) ..Buy this book
• Sentinels (1996)
• Illusions (1997)
• Boobytrap (1998)..Buy this book
• Crazybone (2000)..Buy this book
• Bleeders (2002)..Buy this book
• Spook (2003)...Buy this book
• Nightcrawlers (2005)...Buy this book
• Mourners (2006). Buy this book
• Savages (2007). Buy this book
• Fever (2008). Buy this book
• Schemers (2009)....Buy this book

SHORT STORIES

• "It's a Lousy World" AKA "Sometimes There is Justice" (1968, Augest AHMM; First Cases)
• "The Snatch" (May 1969, MSMM)
• "A Cold Day in November" (November 1969, AHMM)
• "The Crank" (January 1970, MSMM)
• "Death of a Nobody" (Februaryy 1970, AHMM)+
• "The Way the World Spins" (May 1970, AHMM)
• "The Assignment" (February 1972, AHMM; AKA "One of Those Cases")+
• "Blowback" (September 1972, Argosy)
• "Majorcan Assignment" (October 1972, MSMM; AKA Sin Island)+
• "The Scales of Justice" (July 1973, AHMM)
• "Private Eye Blues" (July 1975, AHMM)+
• "The Private Eye Who Collected Pulps" (February 1979, EQMM; AKA The Pulp Connection)+
• "Thin Air" (May 1979, AHMM; also A Mystery by the Tale)
• "A Nice Easy Job" (November 1979, EQMM)
• "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" (January 30, 1980, AHMM)+
• "Dead Man's Slough" (May 21, 1980, AHMM)+
• "A Killing in Xanadu" (1980, Waves Press limited-edition chapbook; also Detectives A-Z)
• "Who's Calling?" (1982, Shosetsu Shincho; also Casefile, 1983)
• "Booktaker" (1982, Sosetsu Shincho; also Casefile, 1983)
• "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch" (1982, Sosetsu Shincho)
• "Quicksilver (1982, Sosetsu Shincho)
• "Cat's Paw" (1983; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Skeleton, Rattle Your Mouldy Leg" (1984, The Eyes Have It; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Sanctuary" (1985, Graveyard Plots; also Suspicious Characters; also 1996, Spadework; AKA "Twenty Miles To Paradise")
• "Ace in the Hole (1986, Mean Streets; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Incident in a Neighbourhood Tavern" (1988, An Eye for Justice)
• "Something Wrong (1988, Small Felonies; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Cache and Carry" (1988, Small Felonies; with Marcia Muller; featuring Sharon McCone)
• "Here Comes Santa Claus" (1989, Mistletoe Mysteries; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Stakeout" (1990, Justice for Hire; also 1996, Spadework)
• "La Bellezza delle Belleze" (1991, Invitation to Murder)
• "Bedeviled" (1991, Cat Crimes; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Souls Burning" (1991, Dark Crimes; also New Crimes 3; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Kinsmen" (Criminal Intent, 1993)
• "One Night at Delores Park" (April 1995, EQMM; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Home is the Place Where" (November 1995, EQMM; also 1996, Spadework; 1998, Private Eyes)
• "Bomb Scare" (December 1995, EQMM; also 1996, Spadework)
• "Worried Mother Job" (1996, Spadework)
• "Zero Tolerance" (1996, Spadework; also January 1998, EQMM)
• "The Big Bite" (2000, The Shamus Game)
• "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" (2002, Most Wanted)
• "The Winning Ticket" (June 2007, EQMM)
  

COLLECTIONS

• Sosetsu Shincho (1982-a Japanese collection of four Nameless novellas)
• Casefile (1983)
• Small Felonies (1988, includes 3 Nameless stories)
• Graveyard Plots (1988, includes 3 Nameless Stories)
• Spadework (1996)
• Scenarios: A ""Nameless Detective"" Casebook (2003)...Buy this book

RELATED LINKS

• Partners in Crime
  An interesting -- if dated -- interview with Bill Pronzini and his wife. Marcia Muller from 1996, on how they've found the write stuff in one another and in their 15-year relationship. Written by David Templeton.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Bluefox808 for the lead.