Bill Pronzini: 104 books

As we follow Rex Sackett ("The Metaphor Kid") on his way to the top in that great spectator sport of the future, hack-writing, we realize that this a fast-moving, ribald parody of the writing profession. From the moment the Head Editor waves his red flag to the second the typewriting stops and a victor is chosen, every reader will be cheering at the sidelines of Prose Bowl.

A freelance charter pilot on uneasy terms with the police but greatly respected by the underworld, Dan Connell turns down a bundle of cash to smuggle a jade carving of a bird out of Singapore—which doesn’t make the thieves or the authorities happy. When an old cohort is killed, Connell discovers that only by finding the bird can he avoid his own murder.

A chilling, ingenious brain-teaser by two masters of the psychological thriller. Nicholas Augustine was a rancher and a railroad enthusiast, a popular maverick whose meteoric rise to the Presidency dumbfounded every self-styled expert in Washington. But scandal threatens when someone is murdered in...

More Oddments features fourteen more detective stories featuring characters such as Fergus O'Hara and the "Nameless" Detective. The stories included in this collection are: Fergus O'Hara, Detective; Chip; Opportunity; A Craving for Originality; One of Those Cases (A "Nameless Detective" Story); I Didn't...

Logspur is a small and dangerously isolated community in the rugged logging country of northern California. The town's lumber baron, Henry Johnston, is a fanatic right-wing paramilitarist who has a cache of illegal weapons and ammo in two old freight cars. The ordnance is slated for a secret bivouac...

Set in San Francisco and environs during the Civil War, it introduces Fergus O'Hara, the most roguish new detective in years, and his equally-engaging wife Hattie. Their first case is a complicated and wacky one. Among other people, places and things, it involves a corpulent financial speculator named...