Presents from the Past

"...And all that was left to do was put together the pieces."

- Hajime Kindaichi (The Kindaichi Case Files: Smoke and Mirrors, 1993)

Some time has passed since I last read a novel from Bill Pronzini's four decade spanning series about his "Nameless Detective," but the previous review on this blog, covering the recently translated The Decagon House Murders (1987) by Yukito Ayatsuri, gave me a splendid excuse to delve into Quicksilver (1984) – which has a plot touching upon the unique history between the United States and Japan. 

In the opening chapter of Quicksilver, Nameless has gone into an official partnership with an old friend, ex-police lieutenant Eberhardt, who found office space in a good location, but the rent is pushing nine-hundred bucks a month. Luckily, there's a client waiting in the wings.

Haruko Gage has been the target of an anonymous, but generous, admirer who keeps sending her expensive gifts in the form of jewelry, which appears as an easy enough of a job for Nameless. It's simply a case of checking on some of Haruko's former lovers and hopefuls who were rejected. But things are seldom this easy for him.

These inquiries take Nameless to San Francisco's Japantown, but what began as a fairly benevolent problem turns into something far more sinister when Nameless visits a public bathhouse and stumbles upon the remains of a member of the Yakuza – hacked to the death with a katana!

It's not the only unnatural death Nameless finds on his path, but, in spite of the presence of the Yakuza, the book isn't a repeat of Dragonfire (1982) and his descend into the mafia-controlled quarters of Chinatown. Dragonfire was a hardboiled tale that put Nameless in the hospital and Eberhardt in a coma, which came on the heels of two unapologetically, classically styled-and plotted novels, Hoodwink (1981) and Scattershot (1982), but Quicksilver falls somewhere in between – i.e. a character-driven detective story with professional criminals lurking in the background.

The trail of bodies is slowly guiding Nameless many decades into the past, all the way back to the early 1940s, when American citizens of Japanese descend where thrown in internment camps for the duration of World War II. And the now often forgotten crimes that took place there.

I think mystery fans that've read a fair amount of Japanese detective fiction will recognize a familiar theme in the motive and identity of the murderer, but I don't know if that was done as a conscious nod to their corner of genre – considering there was even less Japanese crime fiction available in 1984 than there's now.

There's also the all important difference that Quicksilver was written from an American point-of-view, in the hardboiled vein of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, which makes this an item of interest for scholars/connoisseurs of the Japanese crime story. It is interesting as comparison material to how Japanese mystery-and crime writers tackled this subject.

What makes the "Nameless Detective" series of interest to a plot-obsessed classicist, like myself, is not only the occasional excursions to the locked room niche (e.g. Hoodwink, 1981 and Bones, 1985), but also how relatable Nameless (and Pronzini) is as a fellow mystery fan boy. Nameless observes how a police-inspector, named Leo McFate, "talked like Philo Vance" and how a door "creaked open like the one on the old Inner Sanctum radio program."

And than there's Nameless' collection of pulp magazines, which feature or is mentioned in nearly every novel. In this story, Kerry Wade borrowed an issue of Midnight Detective with a luridly illustrated cover in the Yellow Peril tradition. My "Paperjack" edition has a synopsis that was written in that frame, because it promises such things as "a violent ritual murder" and "perverse kidnapping."

That's not at all the well put together, calm and slow moving story, which has the patience of meandering river that knows it'll eventually reach its inevitable conclusion – and doesn't need any gore to disturb its readers.

In short, Quicksilver is a great entry in the Nameless series and this badly written review really doesn't do it any justice. Read it for yourself.

On Matters of Grave Concern

"Though everything will seem dark to you now, remember that even behind the darkest clouds of night there shines the moon of dawn."

- (Robert van Gulik's "The Wrong Sword," from Judge Dee at Work, 1967)

The Body Snatchers Affair (2015) is the third, full-length novel in the historical Carpenter and Quincannon series, which began with a standalone book, Quincannon (1985), that formed the basis for a series of magazine stories and an excellent selection of those stories – collected as Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services (1998). 
 

In 2011, I announced on my blog that the William Roos and Aubrey Kelley of our time, Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, were collaborating on a series of novels starring the duo of gumshoes operating in the San Francisco of the late 1890s. The Bughouse Affair (2013) and The Spook Lights Affair (2013) were the first to appear and The Plague of Thieves Affair (2016) is slated for release early next year, but first let's take a look at The Body Snatchers Affair. 

The lion's share of The Body Snatchers Affair is modeled around the plot of a short story, "The Highbinders," from Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services, in which the body of a Tong leader, Bing Ah Kee, is unceremoniously snatched from his coffin – a potential triggering move for a small-scale civil war on the streets of Chinatown.

Quincannon is hired to fetch a drug-addicted lawyer, James Scarlett, from an opium den, but his half conscious quarry is fatally shot while attempting to carry him out of the Chinese Quarters. The last words Scarlett uttered, "blue shadow," amounts to a dying message, however, the explanation for this part of the plot is the same as in the short story. So it won't yield any surprises, if you've read and remember that particular story, but a good and interesting expansion nonetheless.

While Quincannon attempts to quell a rising fire in Chinatown, Sabina Carpenter has one or two problems of her own to take care of, one professional in nature and the other personal, but in both cases she tries to keep Quincannon in the dark as much as possible.

The professional problem concerns a client of hers, Mrs. Blanchford, who received a $75,000 ransom note for the return of her late-husband's remains. Mrs. Blanchford's husband was interred in the family mausoleum and the door can only be opened with a key that was in a safety-deposit box inside a secured bank building, but the note contained Ruben Blanchford's wedding ring and a piece of satin cut from the lining of a casket.

It's completely impossible to enter the solid looking, family crypt and take away the body, but the casket proved to be indeed empty upon inspection – which is what is being carefully kept from Quincannon. Sabina knows he would insert himself in her investigation, because Quincannon "fancied himself an expert on that sort of mystery" and wants to solve this locked room case herself. If, like me, you fancy yourself a student of the Grandest Game in the World (the obligatory John Dickson Carr reference) then the disappearance from the crypt won't pose much of a challenge for you, but that doesn't make withholding an impossible problem from a locked room enthusiast any less reprehensible. That's like taking painkillers from a sick person. You just don't do that.

Coming: 2016

However, I enjoyed how the two seemingly unrelated cases of body snatchings dovetailed with each other without actually being intertwined. 

The personal problem begins with Carson Montgomery, a metallurgist, who's vying for spot coveted by Quincannon, but Sabina (a former Pink Rose operative) has always been resistant to male advances (especially Quincannon's) ever since losing her husband in the line of duty. Just when Sabina thinks Carson may be the new man in her life, she notices an old, familiar face is watching them. The crackpot who claims to be Sherlock Holmes, first appearing in The Bughouse Affair, has been shadowing them and this eventually leads to a mining scandal from a decade ago and an (unsolved) murder in the background. But more importantly, it casts an interesting light on the bughouse Holmes and his possible role in the next novel. 

My theory: the twist is that the bughouse Sherlock Holmes was Professor Moriarty all along, who thought Quincannon was the actual Holmes in hiding and that gray-flecked, bootleggers beard one of his disguises. The Plague of Thieves Affair could be a hint at Moriarty's next big caper. 

Conclusion: The Body Snatchers Affair has everything what you've come to expect from Pronzini and Muller, but be warned, the book contains material that readers who were onboard with series before 2013 are already familiar with. That being said, I can't wait for the release of The Plague of Thieves Affair. I'm sure it'll contain another impossible problem or two.

A Fling With a Ghostly Thing

"This world is far more mysterious than we give it credit for."

- Victoria Coren (Q.I.: J Series, "Jargon")

Back in late November of 2011, I was handed the scoop on a new, collaborative series of mystery novels, concocted between Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, starring their 1890s San Francisco-based gumshoes from Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services (1998) – among other uncollected short stories and some earlier, full-length adventures (e.g. Beyond the Grave, 1986).

Despite being the one who broke the news, I was fairly late with actually reading The Bughouse Affair (2013) and I didn't do much better with The Spook Lights Affair (2013). In my defense, however, the book wasn't supposed to be published until this year. But enough of this palaver and lets see if I can add anything of substance to the pile of reviews of this still recent release.

The Spook Lights Affair has John Quincannon, formerly attached to the U.S. Secret Service, and Sabina Carpenter, an ex-Pinkerton detective, assigned (once again) to separate cases, but you can't complain in what are still economic rough times – especially if your clients can afford to squander money on a private-eye. Sabina finds herself in the role of matron and has to "baby-sit" Virginia St. Ives, who's being watched by her family to prevent her sneaking off with Lucas Whiffing. The family does not approve of the young family, but the surveillance of Virginia cumulates in a confrontation at a fancy dress party and storms outside with Sabina in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, the only thing Sabina can do for Virginia is getting help after watching her jump to her death from a fog-enwrapped parapet, however, a search beneath the spot only turns up a handbag containing a suicide note and a piece of cloth. The body is nowhere to be found!

Somewhere, around the same time, the ghosts of Quincannon's forebears, who left the Old World for the New One, must've been living vicariously through their descendent as Quincannon goes above and beyond to get his hands on a ten percent reward in the case of the Wells, Fargo Express heist. A daring and masked robber relieved the company of $35,000 and Quincannon is determined to get his $3,500 cut for giving it back to them. Regrettably, a tip from a squeamish gambling addict, Bob Cantwell, leads the detective straight to a days old crime-scene and the traditional scuffles with suspects. I sometimes get the impression detectives related to the Hardboiled School take more bumps than a pro-wrestler on a Pay-Per-View night. All of the (semi)-hardboiled detectives I remember reading ended up trading blows or gunfire with one character or another in pretty much every single story I have read, which sometimes makes them come across as overconfident, street-level Batman's – all they need is alcohol, prospect of a fee, two fists and an ugly mug to land them on. I understand it’s tradition, but, writers, do you have to aim for the head every single time? Can't a guy get a door slammed in his face or his tires slashed every once in a while to get shaken off by his quarry? I'm just suggesting it doesn't always has to be an assault or attempted murder.

A third case is introduced when Mr. Barnaby L. Meekers, from the Western Investment Corporation, wants to engage on a "matter of bizarre nature," which turn out to be spook lights haunting a scattering of abandoned horse-traction cars nearby a beach at a place named Carvill-by-the-Sea (a.k.a. Spook Central). Meeker chased the apparition twice and described as a humanoid shaped, white glow and "the dune crests were unmarked along the thing's path of flight." There weren't impressions of any sort with exception of claw marks on the walls and roofs of the cars "as if the thing had the talons of a beast." 

The explanation for the mysterious disappearance of Virginia’s body and the appearances of the Carville Ghost takes a page from the type of impossible crime stories dating from roughly the same period (in mystery terms) in which The Spook Lights Affair is set such as L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace's A Master of Mysteries (1898) and The Thinking Machine's dismissals of the supernatural. However, even though Pronzini and Muller weren’t able to fool me with their seemingly impossible trickery this time (nice try though), they were able to herd every part of the plot into a coherent narrative and The Spook Lights Affair simply works as a well put together mystery novel brimming with fascinating characters, exciting scenes and places from a by-gone time now forever altered by time. The brief interruption from the bughouse Holmes, which annoy Quincannon to no end, were also more than welcome and it's still funny picturing him as Jeremy Brett – playing the part of the "Scattered-brain" Holmes with the same conviction as that of the original. I hope he'll be back in the next novel.

I couldn't fit this in anywhere else, but if you've read Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services, you'll notice that a scene towards the end of The Spook Lights Affair was borrowed from one the stories from that collection. I also posted in December on an actual (solved) spook lights case in my, ahum, popular series of real-life locked room mysteries and you can find that post here.

Well, in closing, I think it was the previous novel with a blurb saying Pronzini and Muller make beautiful music together, but Carpenter and Quincannon, like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, must be wonderful instruments to play on.

Taking Care of Business

"That was then, this is now, and nobody knows what tomorrow will be. That's the way things are, whether we like it or not."  
- Sam Diamond (Murder by Death, 1976)

After tailing John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter through San Francisco of the late 1800s, I wanted to return to The Nameless Detective, operating in the same area as his professional ascendants, but the places depicted in Bill Pronzini's Breakdown (1991) continue to teem with crime over a century later. 

Nameless is on an undercover assignment that requires him to mingle with the patrons of a neighborhood watering hole, The Hideaway, which is a safe port in the storm of everyday life for an eccentric collection of regulars – tolerating intruders without encouraging them. The regulars are societies cast-aways passing the time with playing chess, telling jokes and stories or simply enjoying a drink (i.e. social solitude). One of the patrons, Nick Pendarves, witnessed Thomas Lujack driving a car over one of his business associates and the defense has hired Nameless to keep tabs on him.

The close-knit community that makes up The Hideaway and the ambience of the tavern is starting to have its effect on Nameless, who's still coming to terms with a trauma sustained in a previous outing and coping with a new strain on his relationship with Kerry Wade, until one evening, Pendarves storms into the place claiming that Lujack tried to run him over – swearing he'll deal with Lujack himself. More problems on the horizon for Nameless as the case starts gaining momentum.

The investigation ties Lujack's cardboard factory with the employment of illegal immigrants, which, in turn, is tied to human trafficking and key figures that simply decide to disappear. One of them is even murdered in Pendarves garage, gassed to death, but the man himself is nowhere to be found and more bodies turn up – with one of them almost being Nameless himself. There are, of course, the personal storylines plaited through the plot of Breakdown, which consists of changes in personality and anxiety attacks stemming from Nameless' ordeal in Shackles (1988) and Kerry's mother is mentally deteriorating and badly needs looking after. And you know Nameless is still rattled when he talks you through 230 pages without a single mention of his pulp collection!

Breakdown is another compelling chapter in the ongoing biography of a private-eye, but the slow moving opening chapters and setting had me believed that Pronzini was making an attempt at modernizing and transplanting the Euro-continental whodunit to the US. Pronzini varies the style of the series to keep it fresh and interesting to write, which made it a possibility, and how can you not imagine a pipe-smoking Frenchman listing to the name Jules Maigret or the dour looking Oberinspektor Derrick (*) of the Munich police (hey, the place is called The Hideaway!) sitting at the bar with the same purpose as Nameless? 

It had that kind of atmosphere and assumed that was the direction the story was heading, before turning into a straight up crime novel and I can't help but feel out of my debt when reviewing them – 'cause they tend to end up as brief plot outlines with some added commentary (not always the case with the more whodunit-oriented stories). But I can't help that I like what I like, and with that being said, I like Nameless and it's never a chore to tag along with him on a case.

The books I have reviewed in The Nameless Detective series:

Twospot (1978; with Collin Wilcox)

Hoodwink (1981)
Scattershot (1982) 

Dragonfire (1982)
Casefile (1983)
Double (1984; with Marcia Muller)

Bones (1985)

Shackles (1988)

Breakdown (1991)
Carpenter and Quincannon (1998) - an addendum

Nightcrawlers (2005)

Savages (2006) - co-reviewed with Patrick

Bill Pronzini: That 70s Crime Writer

"The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective."

- letter, 19 April 1951, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962) 

Raymond Chandler was right. The great detectives of fiction, if they exist, would probably not be private eyes, of some renown, but occupy a seat in front of a computer and dream up the plots they would have solved if they had existed on the pages of a Dashiell Hammett or John Dickson Carr story.

For he's a jolly good fellow!

On April 13, 1943, a mystery writer was born who would not look inconspicuous wearing a fedora and raincoat, prowling those mean streets of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, or stalk the hallways of a decaying mansion were people have disappeared as if by magic – spurting cryptic remarks and chuckles that drives the official policeman up the wall. Alas, common criminals are rarely known for their storybook-like ingenuity and that's why Bill Pronzini criminal ties are merely fictional ones. 

Pronzini's career began in the early 1970s with the publication of The Snatch (1971), which was selected by our common deity hero, John Dickson Carr, as one of the best detective novels of the year, and solidified his name as one of the top crime/mystery readers in the succeeding decade. I'm fairly much a novice when it comes to his work, but what I have read was enough to list him among my favorites and not just because Pronzini is a damn good writer. 

What lights the fire in Pronzini's stories, that keeps most of us drawing to his work like moths, is that he's an avid mystery/collector himself and brings 170 years worth of insight into detective, thriller and private-eye fiction to the game – drifting himself quite naturally between those styles. Pronzini prefers to vary his style and approach to keep it fun and his long-running series fresh, which means that you can bounce with the Nameless Detective from an impossible crime buried in the past (Bones, 1985) to soul-searching suspense (Shackles, 1988). Historical mysteries, stand-alone thrillers, short stories, and that rare beast of crime fiction, properly done crossovers are part of Pronzini's repertoire, but more importantly, characterization reflects the modern era without turning a story into a collection of mini-biographies – adding instead of distracting from the stories. You get to the learn the (main) characters, bit by bit, which I always thought was much far more realistic and makes me care about what happens to them then when I would've waded through hundreds of pages of personal misery with a backpack full of past angst. 

Exactly the same can be said about a number of other post-GAD era writers that I, as a staunch classicist, nonetheless enjoy reading, such as Marcia Muller, William DeAndrea, Herbert Resnicow, Paul Halter and M.P.O. Books, and they have one thing in common with Pronzini: they all love(d) to sink their teeth in a good detective story and sometimes possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. Personally, I believe that their grasp on the genre has enriched their stories and continued to a tradition that others seem to have forgotten. You don't believe me? Xavier Lechard has a gem buried on his blog, a post from 2009, which reports on an Edgar-winning author, Tana French, chortling about how she carries on "the traditions of mystery fiction," and that's true, but than she blasts everyone with a nodding acquaintance with detective stories in the face with a shotgun blast of ignorance: "...my book is narrated in first person, which is an old convention of the genre except that in this case the narrator lies." I wonder if she spend a couple of days in an isolation tank for inspiration, but Agatha Christie was probably struck by that idea when she was doing the dishes. 

That’s why I find it hard to warm up to today's best-selling thrillers and popular police procedurals. They not only lack the historical depth, but I genuinely don't care about the troubled cop with his messy private life – if that's the only thing they have to offer. I want to be entertained or captivated with clever and imaginative plots (clues abound!), engaging characters, atmospheric settings and memorable scenes. Give me the tale of John Quincannon and Elena Oliverez, kindred spirits separated by a hundred years, who managed to help each other solve an even older case (Beyond the Grave, 1986; with Marcia Muller). Give me Nameless and Kerry Wade for a couple, whose mutual love ignited amidst "Carter Dickson-effects" in Hoodwink (1981) and Scattershot (1982). Give me any case that passes through the offices Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services (The Bughouse Affair, 2013). Give me the kind of "fictionalized realism" that drives a good plot (Dragonfire (1982) & Savages, 2005), because actual realism would result in a 600-page novel painstakingly describing a stakeout of a suspect without a payoff. That's what realism in crime fiction would be like. 

But this celebratory post is threatening to turn into a diatribe, and yes, this is embarrassing heap of praise is a mea culpa for not having a proper review ready to mark Bill Pronzini's 70th birthday – unlike some of my fellow bloggers. Rest assured that I'm thoroughly assumed of this fact and will review one of the Nameless novels I have kicking around later this/next month. Until then, I want to congratulate Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller with reaching this personal milestone and hope they've a great day tomorrow, and many more years together to trust their nefarious schemes to paper.

Cherchez la femme

"Locked rooms and mysterious disappearances smack of deliberate subterfuge."
- Sabina Carpenter (Bill Pronzini's "Gunpowder Alley")

John Pugmire is a self-published translator of French-language impossible crime tales, under the enterprising name of Locked Room International, whose résumé includes translations of Paul Halter and Jean-Paul Török – and has recently launched a website to keep us abreast of his publishing plans.

Dumas in 1855 (*)

It was on Pugmire's new website that I learned that he had translated an Alexander Dumas (yes, that Dumas) story, "House Call," for the June, 2013, issue of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and it's actually an excerpt from Les Mohicans de Paris (The Mohicans of Paris, 1854). The introduction notes that "House Call" is the first story since Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 inaugural locked room story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," that employed the device and according to Pugmire, this is the story were "Cherchez la femme" originated from.

Before we dig in, I would like to point out that The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000), edited by Mike Ashley, mentioned that Thomas Bailey Aldrich's "Out of His Head," a self-contained episode from an eponymous novel, was the second only after Poe to feature a locked room problem – except that Aldrich's story is dated 1862. On top of that, Aldrich might not even be third: M.M.B.'s "The Mystery of the Hotel d’Orme" was published in the same year and Dumas has a similar problem, if you consider Wilkie Collins' "A Terribly Strange Bed" as a proper impossible crime, but that's something for the scholars to mull over. I thought it noteworthy that both stories, credited with coming in second, are excerpts from otherwise non-mystery novels.

Anyway, a young woman vanished like a gust of wind from her closed quarters at a boarding school and head of the Sûreté, M. Jackal, is called up to investigate, but it must be said, for a master detective he has to work on his priorities. Jackal is informed upon his arrival that they aren't sure if there had been a disappearance, because the room hasn't been entered yet, but instead of breaking an entrance he parades everyone around the garden to look for clues – and establishing that the door and shutters are bolted and hooked from the inside. Fortunately, this does not deter the story in any way and the outdoor scene is actually quite fun, if you like these kind of deductive reconstructions, and even gave me an early example of the rival detective (e.g. Simon Brimmer in the Ellery Queen TV-series from the 1970s and should be used more often!) as M. Jackal is bested in one or two deductions by a friend of the missing girls' fiancée.

The explanation for the disappearance from the sealed room is dated and often used in later stories as a throw-away suggestion, but "House Call," if it's indeed the second locked room in modern fiction, than this is were the trick first appeared. 

Bill Pronzini, always up to something

And to pad out this post, I decided to pick an impossible crime story from a contemporary fictioneer and ended up choosing Bill Pronzini’s "Gunpowder Alley" – which appeared in the August, 2012, edition of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. You probably picked up on the opening quote that this is a Carpenter and Quincannon story, who appeared recently in The Bughouse Affair (2013), but this time it's mostly a solo-case for John with Sabina on commentary in the background, and naturally, there's a murder that looks everything but natural. 

Quincannon accepted a job from a reluctant client, Titus Willard, to put a stop to a blackmailer who's squashing him for thousands of dollars, but refuses to supply any details and with nothing much to work on, he sets a trap at the drop off – tailing the suspect to a tobacco-store in Gunpowder Alley. A talkative policeman walking his beats bumps into Quincannon when the sound of gunshots whips them into action. The door and windows are bared and secured from the inside, but they do offer a smudged view of a body sprawled on the ground of a cluttered room. 

It's one of those days that John has to relay on his noggin instead of his Navy Colt or a clenched fist. And he did it better then me this time. I was completely lost on this one and Pronzini walked a fine tight-rope, because part of the solution used a gimmick that I am not overly fond of, but once you get the overall picture, it's a nifty trick that shows that the author knows his classics. 

Well, I think if there's one conclusion  we can draw from this post, it's that I love a good locked room mystery.

A Twist in Time

"I started playing so I could link the distant past to the far future."

- Hikaru Shindo. 

I've always had an affinity for crossovers, which, alas, are scarce in the mystery genre, but every now and then, one rises to the surface. The rotating writing team that once operated under a number of pennames, including Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge, wrote one, Black Widow (1951), where Lt. Trant cast Peter Duluth as the main suspect of his murder investigation and The People vs. Withers and Malone (1963) has Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer's series detectives facing off against Murphy's Law – and gave me one hell of a dream!

The mystery writing husband-and-wife team of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller have occasionally pooled their talents, and as a result, The Nameless Detective and Sharon McCone inhabit the same universe and I recommend Double (1984), if you have never seen them on a case together. However, Beyond the Grave (1986) may have been their best collaboration from that period. It presents the reader with the alluring problem of a hidden treasure of religious artifacts, hidden in 1846, that leaves a streak of crime through history – and it takes the combined skills of two detectives, a hundred years apart, to solve it.

Beyond the Grave opens with the only part of the novel that takes place during 1846, when Rancho Rinconada de los Robles, the estate of Don Esteban Velasquez, fell during the Bear Flag Revolt, but not before trusting Padre Urbano with stowing away his family treasure. The padre died during the siege of the ranch and the cache of artifacts evanesced from history. We move from the 1840s to the 1980s, where Elena Oliverez, curator of the Museum of Mexican Arts in Santa Barbara, who solved a locked room murder there in one of Muller's solo novels, The Tree of Death (1983), finds a sheaf of papers in a marriage coffer she purchased at an auction. It's part of a report dating back to 1894 from a private investigation firm named Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services!

According to the report, Felipe Velasquez, son of Don Esteban, engaged Quincannon after a golden statuette of the Virgin Mary, the name of his father and date etched into the gold, turned up and wants him to follow the trail – in the hope of recovering more of his father's lost collection. Meanwhile, in the future, Elena tries to piece together the past and find other scraps of Quincannon's report. The construction of the plot is not entirely dissimilar to Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror (1966), in which Ellery Queen devours one of Dr. Watson's unpublished manuscripts accounting Sherlock Holmes' involvement in the Jack the Ripper case, but Elena is much more involved than Ellery and does more than providing a part of the solution. Not to mention that she actually has to look for Quincannon's papers in order to read them and it was a nice touch to show that she was still a museum curator, and that she couldn't just take time-off to indulge in a personal interest at her leisure. Ellery also didn't have to deal with a present day murderer near an abandoned grave.

But than again, Pronzini and Muller are as good at shaping characters as they are at crafting plots, but that also gave this book an aura of melancholy. Elena Oliverez has a fair share of personal issues troubling her, like a hospitalized mother and a wrecked relationship, and Quincannon has sworn off the demon rum and convinced that Sabina's resilience against his advances are weakening, but it's sad to think about when they're referred to in the 1986-parts as the long-dead detectives. The separation in time makes Quincannon's problems, and Elena's own worries, seem like trifles that are, or will be, dust particles in time. I have mentioned before that Carpenter and Quincannon are my favorite Pronzini/Muller characters (sorry Nameless and McCone) and I like to think that they were cut from the same ephemeral material as Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe.

However, Carpenter and Quincannon's mortality does not damage the pleasure I got from Quincannon and Oliverez, a private-eye from 1890s and an amateur snoop from the 1980s, tying together an intrigue that began in 1846, picked up in 1894 and finally ended in 1986 – and thought almost the same as Oliverez before she shared this final sad reflection, "I wished I could tell him the way it had ended." Luckily, there’s nothing deterring you from learning how this bloody 140 yearlong treasure hunt ended, but to fully appreciate this story, you should be acquainted with the characters before picking this one up.

Finally, I have to point out a continuity problem when compared with The Bughouse Affair (2013): Quincannon mentions in Beyond the Grave that he’s a read a collection of short stories by Conan Doyle and purposely mimics Sherlock Holmes' speech, but in The Bughouse Affair he's talked about as an actual person – a contemporary detective of Quincannon! Of course, we can assume that in this universe "Conan Doyle" is merely a pseudonym for Dr. Watson choose and probably picked that name because it was the name of a young a man who published a prosperous story, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement," that some people took as a true eye-witness account of what happened aboard the Mary Celeste. Who would take any thing that guy wrote now as anything but fiction! It was a perfect cover and the reason why everyone at the time of Beyond the Grave assumed he was a storybook character. Their real names were probably Sheringford Homes and Dr. John Smith. It also explains why the real Doyle was fed-up with Sherlock Holmes overshadowing his other actual work and must have been thrilled when Dr. Smith send him the account of his friends final adventure at Reichenbach Falls. I think I would made a great conspiracy theorist.

I hope the time between now and the next review will be a lot shorter.

A Thieving Lot

"He thinks he's Sherlock Holmes in the flesh."

- Robert Arthur's "The Adventure of the Single Footprint" (Mystery and More Mystery, 1966)

In November of 2011, I reviewed Carpenterand Quincannon: Professional Detective Services (1998), a collection of short stories originally penned during the 1990s, in which John Quincannon abandoned a dwindling career with the United States Secret Service to begin his own detective agency with Sabine Carpenter, a former Pinkerton operative, in San Francisco of the 1890s.

The collection turned out to be a splendid farrago of period stories filled with colorful character and beloved tropes that trudge around in evocative settings, but the finishing touch came when Bill Pronzini informed me that he and Marcia Muller were collaborating on series of Carpenter and Quincannon novels – and gave me permission to announce The Bughouse Affair (2013) and The Spook Light Affair (2014) to the public. And yes. Considering the fact that I had the scoop, I should've reviewed this one a lot sooner. I was late with placing the order, and when the book finally arrived, I was deeply immersed in Jan Ekström's Deadly Reunion (1975). But enough excuses. 

In this first of what's hopefully to be an annual affair, Carpenter and Quincannon have separate assignments to take care of that are a part of the daily routine of a detective agency. 

Sabina has to snuff out an elusive and particular nasty pickpocket from the crowds patronizing an amusement park, a torch-lit bazaar and the throng of people walking the evening Cocktail Route, but the trail soon leads away from San Francisco's entertainment district to a seamier part of town. And a rather nasty murder. Somewhere else, John Carpenter is spending an uncomfortable evening in the shrubbery to stake out a house, in the hopes of catching a burglar in the act, but when his reward is almost within in his grasp he lets it literally slips through his fingers. Oh, and he's also held at gunpoint, mistaken as a fleeing thief in the night, by a venerable colleague from England. Or at least he claims to be.

During the opening of The Bughouse Affair, a newspaper scribbling by Ambrose Bierce touted that the world's most-celebrated detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, has emerged from Reichenbach Falls and found his way to their city where's spending a period of leisure a the home of a prominent family – who happened to be neighboring the burgled house. Quincannon shares Bierce's opinion that he's a crackbrain, adding that he also has the routine of a conman, and that appears to be the opinion of everyone who's aware that Sherlock Holmes disappeared alongside his arch nemesis in the gorge of Reichenbach Falls, which makes it even funnier if you imagine Jeremy Brett as the bughouse Holmes.

Whether he's an impostor or the actual Sherlock Holmes, he's playing the role like a violin, and even accompanies Quincannon on his next stake-out, where the case goes from bad to worse after the furtive burglar assaults the owner of the house – leaving him dead inside a locked room and than manages to disappear from the house unseen!

Pronzini usually dabbles in two kinds of illusions: practical ones that might actually work off-page and complex trickery that would not disgrace the stage of a famous illusionist (e.g. "The Arrowmont Prison Riddle," collected All But Impossible, 1981). I won't divulge under which header I place this impossible crime, but I definitely enjoyed it. Now that I think about it, the only one of these kind of stories (by Pronzini) that I disliked was "Proof of Guilt" (collected in Murder Impossible, 1990), which left me under whelmed after the editors praised it as "one of the very best impossible shorts written over the past 50 years." The solution was also a take-off on a trick that I loath and, IMHO, as dated as poisonous snakes and trapdoors. I hated it when Clayton Rawson used it and hated when Pronzini gave it a spin. Not to mention that Pronzini wrote at least a handful of other impossible shorts that were miles better (e.g. "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" and "Booktaker," collected in Casefile, 1983, or "Medium Rare" in the previously mentioned Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services). Anyway, back to the review at hand! 

As to be expected in a detective story, evidence from Sabina’s pickpocket case turns up in Quincannon’s investigation, and slowly, everything begins to come together in a most satisfying way. The manner in which Quincannon, Sabina and the presumptive Mr. Sherlock Holmes take part in the explanation was very reminiscent of Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) – especially how the bughouse detective's solution echoed one of the tales from the canon. A conscious nod to one of their predecessors whose most famous novel is also one of the most successful parodies of the storybook detective ever written?

The Bughouse Affair is more than just flight-of-fancy through a time and place now long gone by, however, the busy tourist strip, chute-rides at the amusement park, fire-lit bazaars, crowded brothels, moldy pawnshops and the many gaudy underworld figures that populate this story adds color and details to an already imaginative and absorbing plot.

If your taste runs in the direction of a classically-styled whodunit, inexplicable crimes committed in sealed rooms, Holmesian pastiches and/or historical fiction than The Bughouse Affair is your book and I recommend you track down a copy ASAP. It might give publishers an incentive to publish more of these stories.   

"Shine on this life that's burnin' out"

Kurt: "You gotta learn not to awaken the dragon, alright."

Mondo: "That's when I'll be breathing fire."

- Generation X: The Movie (1996)

The last time I left The Nameless Detective, he was coming from one of the worst weeks in his life. Professionally, he had to deal with a very dissatisfied and mentally unstable client, who accused him of bungling up a case she had given him, and begins a media campaign to get his private investigators license revoked – as well as picking the lock of three baffling and, to all appearances, impossible crimes. A backlash of these problems is felt in his personal life when his relationship with Kerry Wade begins to unravel and things are about to get worse. Much, much worse.

Dragonfire (1982) takes place not long after the events in Scattershot (1982) and Nameless is no longer a private investigator or in a relationship, which is something his friend Lieutenant Eberhardt can sympathize with. His wife has walked out on him. So the sad dopes sit in the backyard, gulping down beers and throwing strips of meat on the barbecue, feeling miserable when the doorbell rang. On the doorstep they find an Asian-looking man who immediately opens fire: sending Eberhardt into a deep coma and Nameless to the hospital with a metal slug in his arm, but within a week he's back on the street – as pissed off as a fire breathing dragon with the morning blues.

The two books preceding this one, Hoodwink (1981) and Scattershot, were unapologetically classical in tone, stringing together no less than five locked room mysteries in total, while Dragonfire is outspokenly hardboiled. But do not assume that, after being released from the hospital, that Nameless goes full Mike Hammer on the inhabitants of Chinatown. It's hardboiled in the way that it leads you away from the safe tourist strip of that neighborhood to a seamier part of town, filled with gambling holes and gang members, where prying strangers aren't always the recipient of Chinese hospitality. Oh, and in case anyone is getting the wrong idea here, Dragonfire is not an updated Yellow Peril story. On the contrary, Pronzini depicts the Chinese characters in this book respectfully, honest, but respectfully and without a trace of racism.

Anyhow, in defiance of another attempt on his life, and Eberhardt still fighting for his, Nameless deals with the problems in front of him in a surprisingly rational manner – acting as a detective should by following up leads and connecting the spaces between the dots. The ending and the character of the murderer were also very well handled and probably my favorite part of the book. The plot was a bit simpler than in the previous books, mentioned here above, but that it had a plot to begin with, when it could have easily been a full-out thriller filled with gun smoke and the dull cracking of shattered bones, shows why I am rarely disappointed when I pull a Nameless novel from my shelves. 

It's also why I have been rather summary in my description of this book. A lot more happens as Nameless gauges for the truth and the theme's in it (making choices and how you are sometimes forced to be able to differentiate between bad and Bad) makes for a good read, if you're familiar with the characters, and therefore I think that Dragonfire is unable to disappoint any true fan of this series.

Last but not least: Pronzini and Muller's The Bughouse Affair will be released on January 9, 2013.

*rubs hands in gleeful anticipation*

All the books I reviewd by Bill Pronzini: 
 

Twospot (1978; with Collin Wilcox)

Hoodwink (1981)
Scattershot (1982) 

Dragonfire (1982)
Casefile (1983)
Double (1984; with Marcia Muller)

Bones (1985)

Shackles (1988)
Carpenter and Quincannon (1998) - an addendum

Nightcrawlers (2005)

Savages (2006) - co-reviewed with Patrick