Bill Pronzini

Bill Pronzini (born April 13, 1943) is an American writer of detective fiction. He is also an active anthologist, having compiled more than 100 collections, most of which focus on mystery, western, and science fiction short stories.

He published his first novel, The Stalker, in 1971. However, his best known works are the Nameless Detective series, which he began in 1971. As of April, 2009, there are more than 35 books in the series, as well as a number of short stories. Over the life of the series, Nameless has gracefully grown and matured as an “everyman” character, aging along with his creator and audience. While the stories involve the usual range of crimes typical to mysteries, they depict relatively little violence. Pronzini’s style is more character driven than plot driven, giving his stories insights, depth, and durability atypical for the mystery field. Because Nameless develops over the run of the series, it's most effective to read them in sequence.

His books have been translated into nearly twenty languages, and have been published in more than thirty countries.

Biography

William John Pronzini was born in Petaluma, California. He has been married three times. The first marriage was to Laura Patricia Adolphson (1965, divorced 1967); the second was to Brunhilde Schier (July 28, 1972, separated December 1985, divorced a couple of years later). He married mystery writer Marcia Muller in 1992. They have collaborated on three novels: Beyond the Grave (1986), The Lighthouse, (1987), and Double (1984), a Nameless Detective novel, as well as on numerous anthologies.

In 1987 he won The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by The Private Eye Writers of America. It is a more exclusive version of their Shamus Award. He has been nominated three times by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award and received their Grand Master designation in May 2008.

Selected bibliography

Bill Pronzini has written so many novels, and compiled so many anthologies, that a complete listing is difficult to achieve. The following is a list of his best-known fiction.

Nameless Detective novels

See Nameless Detective for complete list

Other Novels

Games, Snowbound, Undercurrent, Panic!, The Stalker and A Wasteland of Strangers

Pseudonymous works

• William Hart Davis (joint work with collaborator Jeffrey Wallmann) (one novel, Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death)
• Jack Foxx (four novels, Dead Run, Freebooty, The Jade Figurine, Wildfire)
• William Jeffrey (joint works with collaborator Jeffrey Wallmann) (three novels, Border Fever, Day of the Moon, Duel at Gold Buttes)
• Alex Saxon (one novel, A Run in Diamonds)

Anthologies

• Twenty-three collections, mainly mystery.
• with Barry N. Malzberg: four science fiction collections.
• with Martin H. Greenberg: fifty-six collections, mainly mystery and western.
• with Marcia Muller: twenty collections, mainly mystery, suspense, and western.

Short stories

Pronzini has written more than three hundred short stories appearing in publications, including the some of the last issues of both Adventure and Argosy magazines, generally considered the first American pulp magazines. Pronzini's work also appeared in Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology. The 1890s Western detective short story Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services (1998) centers on Sabina Carpenter, a Pinkerton detective widow working in her fallen husband's profession.