The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

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When the writer F. Paul Wilson noted several years ago that private eye novels are snapshots of a certain era, I wondered immediately if he had Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series in mind.

Unlike any other body of work in the genre, Nameless is a history of San Francisco and its environs over a period of five decades; a history of American culture from the time of the hippies through the new century when peace and love, brother, are not only forgotten but downright anathema to a country becoming more and more right-wing; and a fictional autobiography, if you will, of a detective who is very much like his creator. In fact, when Bill finally gave him a name, no one was surprised when it turned out to be “Bill.”

I began this introduction by alluding to the Nameless novels because they are not only the dominant part of Bill’s worldwide reputation, they also have a lot in common with the most neglected part of his work — his brilliant, urgent stand-alones. And the stand-alones have even more in common with Bill’s short stories.

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