Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel

Nightcrawlers benefits from being the mature work of a modern detective novel master, Bill Pronzini. The book is one of his finest creations in one of the most interesting detective series ever, the Nameless detective. After dark, the slimiest people crawl out from under the rocks where they hide from the daylight to indulge in dark dreams and visions that involve savaging the others. Nightcrawlers displays, tracks, and squashes four such types of human vermin in a noir novel that will remind many of the 1930s California detective stories. Nightcrawlers continues with Nameless in a detective agency with young partner, Tamara Corbin, who is tired of computer hacking and yearns for field work while missing her cello-playing lover and Jake Runyan who is burnt out from losing his wife to cancer and his son to his first wife's hate. They have moved to South Park in San Francisco, and Nameless is having trouble remembering to head for the new office. In a prologue, we are introduced to two young men who like to batter homosexuals after getting high on drugs and an obsessed man who is looking for a little girl who looks like Angie. All the characters will loom large in the main story. A call from Jake's estranged son, Joshua, puts Jake into the middle of trying to stop the homosexual beatings. But will Jake find more than Joshua bargained for? Tamara has a lead on a deadbeat dad and does two nights of surveillance without success. But she does spot something that doesn't seem right and looks into it. Nameless gets a call to see Russ Dancer, a hack writer who appears in two earlier books, and is asked to deliver a mysterious package to Nameless's mother-in-law, Cybil. The cases all start as detective procedurals and soon slip into being something more, character tests. From those tests, you'll find new depths in each of the characters as the fire of hate and conflict anneals their souls. The interplay of the plot lines provides a good balance to the book and keeps the novel from depending too much on any one aspect of the stories. As a result, you get a rounded sense of the three detectives that wouldn't otherwise be possible. I was reminded of the 87th Precinct books by Ed McBain except I thought that the local color, noir overtones, and plot threads were more interesting here in Nightcrawlers.

I noticed it in the last book and I'll say it again - the detective is only pseudo-nameless. They do, in fact, refer to him as `Bill' several times in the novel. That aside, it was a good detective story. It teeters on the edge of hard-boiled, but it's soft enough not to offend anyone's sensibilities. I think this is a great series for those who don't want the true cozies, but also don't want too graphic descriptions or really, really nasty plot lines. It won't give you nightmares, but it will make you think. I particularly like the very diverse group of characters portrayed, both in the agency and as bit players. The dialogue and interaction ring true, the storyline flows wonderfully, and there's just enough of an `Oh!' factor at the end. You kind of see the ending coming, but not soon enough to spoil the surprise. Honestly, I think it would appeal to both cozy and hard-bitten crime buffs, and I'll almost certainly end up reading more.

First off - covers can be deceiving. The Nightcrawlers title, along with the hazy figure at the end of a dark tunnel, initially gave me the impression that this was a suspense series in the creepy, X-Files sort of vein. I was heading to the beach for the weekend, stopped at the store for snacks, and the cover caught my eye: it looked interesting, and I bought it on impulse, without even reading the blurbs on the back cover. Well. You can't get much further from X-Files territory. Nightcrawlers is basically a compilation of stories from the Nameless detective agency, blended together. Russ Dancer, a dying hack author, has commissioned Nameless (I'm still not quite sure where the whole 'Nameless' bit came about - his name is Bill) to carry out his last wish - to give a mysterious package to an old flame. Investigator Jake Runyon tries to help his estranged son, after his son's partner is a victim of a brutal gay-bashing. And Nameless's workaholic junior partner, Tamara Corbin, stumbles onto a kidnapping while on a stakeout. Pronzini has plenty of experience in his genre, and it shows. The themes are dark and gritty, and his writing is tight and focused. The three main characters are well-drawn, if not particularly distinctive, or unfortunately, even memorable (except for maybe Nameless). The book kind of stumbles along until Tamara disappears, and Nameless slides out of the background and comes front and center. Many of the supporting characters are stereotypes, and dialogue intended to establish characterization often doesn't ring true. And coming in to the series so late, I had a little trouble keeping track of who was who and what was going on for the first couple of chapters. Pronzini alternates his main protagonists point of view, abruptly switching between plotlines from chapter to chapter. It's handled as smoothly as possible and I don't really see a better way around it, but the device still slows the narrative. Each time I got interested in one of the stories, I was yanked away and thrust back into the middle of another, until they all verged together about halfway through the book. There aren't many authors who manage to create a character for one novel, or over the course of a short series; much less successfully sustain the series over the course of three or four decades. Lawrence Block and his Matt Scudder series come to mind... and that's not a bad comparison, in the way Nameless has grown and evolved over the course of 35 years. But even with the disturbing subject matter he's working with here, Pronzini can't quite build up the dark and disturbing atmosphere that's the hallmark of the Scudder books. That's not an interest killer though, because the events that unfold (at least in this installment) are even more realistic as written in such a straightforward manner. All in all, even with a little nitpicking, I was pretty impressed. Enough to go back to the beginning, and learn more about Nameless and his associates.

There's a certain style of writing that Bill Pronzini embraces. Some might call it harsh. Unlike the authors who describe the event or the perps in language more acceptable for readers, PC if you will, Pronzini calls a . . . well you get my drift. This is a troika of stories. Tamara Corbin, who has grown into the putative 'head' of the Detective Agency but lacks the field bacground of Bill and Runyon, gets involved with the kidnapping of a 6-year old girl that she inadvertantly stumbles upon while surveilling an adjacent house for a child support skip-trace. Bill, 'Nameless,' answers the plea of a man dying of cirrhosis only to be asked to deliver a package to his mother-in-law with whom the man had some relationship years earlier. This sends the family into turmoil, not surprisingly for everyone but Bill, who is left chagrined and confused. Come on Bill. What did you expect? Jake Runyon continues to deal with the rejection of his gay son and investigates a series of gay bashings in the Castro District of San Francisco, all the while mourning the death of his wife, Colleen. All in all the dialogue is crisp and very real, quite good actually, almost a throwback to the days of Chandler and Spillane, but the plots lack the riveting aspect of say "The Innocent" or "Velocity" by Coben and Koontz. Like Scotch, Prinzoni is an acquired taste. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury

"Nightcrawlers" is the 29th Nameless Detective novel by Bill Pronzini, one of the great mystery writers working today. This novel is actually a collection of 3 stories in which Nameless, his partner Tamara Corbin. and operative Jake Runyan all have separate cases. Nameless is summoned to the death bed of Russ Dancer, a former pulp writer who wishes Nameless to deliver a package to his mother-in-law, Cybil Wade after Dancer passes away. Jake Runyan investigates several cases of gay-bashing in the Castro district. One of the victims is lover of Jakes's son, Joshua. While on a routine stakeout, Tamara notices a man struggle with something that Tamara feels is a child. Tamara decides to snoop around the house, and is taken captive by a madman, Robert Lemoyne. He had kidnapped a little girl Lauren whom Lemoyne believed was his daughter. He takes them to a remote parcel of land in Nevada County with plans to kill them. This was not my favorite Nameless novel. The Tamara storyline, while exciting at the end, was really slow for me. Nameless (I still call him this even though we know his name is Bill) and the Russ Dancer storyline are for long time readers of this series, and new readers would need to go back to "Hoodwink" to understand all aspects of this storyline. Most of the actual detection was done by Jake Runyan with his working to find the gay-bashers in the Castro district. All the novels by Bill Pronzini are well written. I almost always give his novels 5 stars but this one lacked something. All in all, however, this is a very good book.