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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,...

Nameless may not like David Virden, but the case is simple enough: find his ex-wife, and they know where she is. Deliver some papers to her and it is is all done. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and slams the door. His colleague, Tamara, tells Nameless that Virden threatens to sue, stops payment on his checks, and claims that the woman they located is not his wife. Then he disappears and his fiancee...

More Oddments features fourteen more detective stories featuring characters such as Fergus O'Hara and the "Nameless" Detective. The stories included in this collection are:Fergus O'Hara, DetectiveChipOpportunityA Craving for OriginalityOne of Those Cases (A "Nameless Detective" Story)I Didn't Do ItQuicker Than the Eye (with Michael Kurland)Angel of MercyConnoisseurMrs. RakubianSmuggler's IslandA Taste of ParadiseUnder the SkinProse Bowl (with Barry...

ISBN 0786709421

"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...

The detective told the man that he would do whatever he could to find his missing wife. She has a history of running away, and he finds her in a sleazy hotel. When she disappears again, there is blood on the kitchen floor and the husband is the prime suspect.

For the Nameless Detective, investigations involving matters of the heart are to be avoided at all costs. When an old poker buddy asks him to help frazzled and distraught Kay Runyon, whose husband, Victor, is having a clandestine affair with a mystery woman named Nedra, Nameless unwillingly relents, but he soon discovers there is much more at stake than a simple affair. Nedra is a modern-day Circe who attracts men who become dangerously obsessed with...

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...

Young, newly rich Verity Daniels claims to be receiving threatening demands for money. When Jake Runyon agrees to investigate, it seems a relatively simple matter. The case, however, is nowhere near as clear-cut as it first appears. And Verity Daniels is nowhere near the helpless victim she pretends to be. A series of surprise revelations followed by a sudden act of violence leads to a serious charge against Jake. With the help of partner Tamara Corbin,...

A locked room mystery that goes from stolen books to stolen lives and the hunt for a phantom stalker with a penchant for pouring acid to make his point give Nameless and his partner Jake more than enough work to earn their fees--as long as neither turns his back at the wrong moment. Nameless wasn't supposed to come into the office on Mondays; or even answer the phone. On this Monday, he did both. The call was from Barney Rivera - once a friend, now...