Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel

Bill Pronzini's novel, Fever, features his Nameless Detective and partners working on another pair of crimes. This has been Pronzini's format for the series for a while now, and it's really effective. The author concentrates more on telling interesting mysteries against the fabric of real life, and creating organic detective that grow from book to book. This one starts out interestingly, with Nameless and his partner Tamara picking up the trail of Janice Krochek, a wife gone missing. Jake Runyon, their field operative, has tracked the woman down. I liked the way Pronzini sets up the encounter and explains the laws of tracking down adults. A private eye can't just bag and tag an adult that's willingly gone missing. Adults have the right to disappear and not come home any time they want to. Janice Krochek's addiction to gambling shows up on page one and maintains the addiction theme of the novel throughout. Normally in a Nameless novel there's a client or someone Nameless meets that deserves rooting on. In Fever, though, Nameless doesn't care much for Janice Krochek or her husband Mitch. However, both of these characters - slaves to their own addictions - are very true to life. Pronzini writes the characters lean and mean, pared to the bone, but the story echoes and provides food for thought. As soon as Nameless believes he's out of the Janice tracking business, she shows back up at his agency after someone has beaten her up. She claims that her life is in danger. Nameless takes her back to her husband, but it's clear that he's not as happy about having her back as he'd thought he would be. I had a lot of mixed feelings about this ending, but thankfully Pronzini doesn't let the story end there, because it suddenly takes on more dangerous and mysterious overtones. In the meantime, Jake Runyon gets involved with a pro bono case of his own that Tamara has undertaken for the agency. Brian Youngblood's life has suddenly turned inside out and his mother wants to know why. Jake's investigation put him into the path of Bryn Darby, a woman who becomes part of the Nameless canon in later books. I had read about Bryn in other books, and now I'm glad I got to find out how they first met and what drew them together. Jake is one of those interesting, wounded characters that are fun to follow. The Krochek case turns violent when Mitch calls Nameless in and shows him all the blood smeared throughout his house. I was pretty certain that Mitch had murdered his wife at that point, but Nameless takes the case on again to find out what happened. I knew I was in for a rollercoaster ride and looked forward to it. Pronzini has been writing this private detective series for forty years and I've been reading them almost as long. Although I've figured out most of the author's moves during that time, he can still fool me and throw a curveball that catches me looking. The twist at the end of Fever is a great one.

"You can't hold yourself responsible for the actions of others---that was a hard and fast truth..." Isn't that the truth? And, the overarching theme of another one of the fine novels in this series. This quote is Runyan, one of the PIs ,musing to himself about the sad case he is investigating, pro bono, for an older woman with a wayward adult child. Runyon finds the truth and, while he is tempted to cover it up, doesn't. After all, people do what they do to themselves.You can just do so much. Keeping with his usual structure, Pronzini has another narrative going at the same time, playing off the same theme: a man who loves his wayward wife, who is a compulsive gambler, who wants to help her and so turns to the nameless detective(who does, it turns out in this book, gets a first name). This narrative ends with the same lesson. These books are excellent---there is hardbolied language but he does not use it so much that it clutters the narratives and distracts from the lessons. Spare and effective.

"Fever" is the 32nd Nameless Detective novel by Bill Pronzini. The Nameless series is one of the longest running in detective fiction. Once a lone wolf detective, Nameless now has a name (Bill), a partner (Tamara), and 2 operatives in his agency. The agency is hired by Mitchell Krochek to find his missing wife Janice. They find her rather easily, but she refuses to go home. Janice has a bad case of gambling fever and may be involved with some unsavory characters. When someone close to the Krochek's is killed, Nameless realizes this case is more complex than he once thought. The other case is a pro bono case for Jake Runyon. Rose Youngblood's son Brian has been beaten up and she feared for his life. The more Runyon investigates, the more bizarre the case becomes. Pronzini is one of those rare authors that puts the reader at the scene of the action. His writing is clear and concise. "Fever" is a strong addition to this series and is highly recommended.

Since the Nameless Detective (now, not so nameless) began building a practice with Tamara Corbin, this series has just gotten better and better. With two partners, Nameless and Tamara, dedicated detective, Jake Runyon, and new detective, Alex Chavez (who appears as little more than a name so far), the books can follow many story lines at the same time with different kinds of character and plot complications. It works really well. Nameless is now in his sixties and trying to be semi-retired, except that cases keep pulling him back into being more active than he would like. Tamara is young and smart, and frustrated by having lost her boyfriend who left town for a new career and another woman. Jake is tormented by the early death of his beloved wife, and his estrangement from his son who lives in San Francisco; Jake's deep pain is the foundation that makes the recent stories more vivid and powerful. The book starts out innocently enough: Mitchell Krochek wants his wayward wife, Janice, back. She has a habit of dropping out to indulge in her passion for gambling. While she normally returns a lot poorer and of her own accord, this time she's gone for a record amount of time. Jake finds Janice, and Nameless and Tamara confront her. Janice doesn't want to go back, and the detectives are ethically bound not to disclose her location without her permission. Meanwhile, Tamara has taken on a pro bono case and assigned Jake to it: Rose Youngblood is concerned about her son, Brian, who had been assaulted recently and wouldn't talk about it. Jake finds the investigation to be tougher than expected until he gets an unexpected call that gives him a powerful lead. Things heat up in the Krochek case when Janice unexpectedly returns to Mitchell . . . and then disappears again amid signs of potential foul play. Searching out the answers to these seemingly simple puzzles requires lot of careful investigation, hard thinking, and much leg work. The solutions will stun you. Bill Pronzini is at his plot-plotting best in Fever, and he takes the time to make the characters involved in the mystery to be unique and unforgettable. Very nice!

Bill Pronzini's "Fever" is about the compulsions that drive people to the edge--and occasionally straight over. The Nameless Detective (whose first name we now know is Bill) is in his sixties and semi-retired. He runs a San Francisco-based private investigation agency along with his partner, Tamara Corbin. His best investigator is the morose workaholic Jake Runyon, a former cop for the Seattle PD and a man in deep mourning since the death of his beloved wife, Colleen. Known as "Bloodhound Jake," Runyon's "instincts were sharper, his tenacity greater" than anyone Bill has ever encountered; he works long hours to avoid the unbearable loneliness of his empty apartment. Jake and his colleagues will need all of their investigative skills to solve the difficult problems that lie ahead. The first case involves thirty-three year old Janice Krochek, a high-strung woman who has a history of disappearing repeatedly from her million-dollar Oakland Hills home. Janice's fever is Internet gambling and she's got it bad. Now she has vanished again, and her exasperated and self-centered husband, Mitchell, hires Bill's firm to find her. Jake locates Janice; Bill and Tamara confront her about her high-stakes gambling. In addition, they can't help but notice that in an effort to get her hands on even more money, Janice has come into contact with some extremely sleazy individuals. She refuses to accept the fact that her compulsive gambling is a sickness that needs treatment. To her it's "the sweetest high there is...the action, the excitement...there's nothing else like it." Even though Mitch claims that he wants her to return home, Janice adamantly refuses to come back. Runyon's next client is Rose Youngblood, a widowed black woman in her fifties who works in a college admissions office and is active in her church and community. Rose wants the agency to find out why her twenty-six year old son, Brian, has suddenly undergone a radical personality change. She insists that Brian always had good values, held down a steady job, and seemed to have a bright future. Recently, he has begun to behave secretively and is frequently agitated. Furthermore, someone beat him up badly and he stubbornly refuses to identify the perpetrator. After looking into Brian's finances, Runyon learns that the young man has gone deeply into in debt. What caused Brian's abrupt transformation? Jake's life is further complicated by an encounter with a deformed woman who hides half her face with a scarf. He rescues her from some teenaged bullies and subsequently looks into her good eye and sees something that makes him empathize with her: pain "raw and naked, the kind that goes marrow-deep, soul deep." Jake wants to get to know this woman better; connecting with someone who understands suffering as he does might help him heal his own wounds. Bill Pronzini has a smooth, no-frills writing style marked by sharply-written dialogue and changes in point of view (first person wh