Shackles: Nameless Detective - Paperback

by Bill Pronzini (Author)

He is ruthless and amoral, and he feels nothing but fury and a burning desire for revenge upon "Nameless," the man he believes is responsible for ruining his life. So he plots a horrible, lingering death for his victim.

One night, "Nameless" is abducted by his unknown enemy, taken to a mountain cabin, chained to a wall, and left there to die once the scanty provisions left for him run out. In the icy whiteness of dead winter, "Nameless" has nothing to do but search his memory. Who is his captor? When did their paths cross? And what could he have done to warrant such revenge? Perhaps the answer lies in one of the secondhand paperbacks or magazines provided for his "comfort" or perhaps there is some significance in the date he was kidnapped or...

His isolated captivity is a nightmare, and he must take each day as it comes just in order to keep his sanity. There is but one thought that keeps him going-a vow that somehow he will escape. There must be something-one small detail-his jailor overlooked...

Once free of the physical shackles that bound his body, "Nameless" must remove the emotional shackles that have closed upon his mind. He sets out on a quest to find his captor. Now, the roles are reversed and the hunted becomes the hunter...

Author Biography

Bill Pronzini is simply one of the masters. He seems to have taken a crack at just about every genre: mysteries, noirish thrillers, historicals, locked-room mysteries, adventure novels, spy capers, men's action, westerns, and, of course, his masterful, long-running Nameless private detective series, now entering its fourth decade, with no signs of creative flagging. He's also ghosted several Brett Halliday short stories as Michael Shayne for Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, and has managed to collaborate with such fellow writers as John Lutz, Barry Wahlberg, Collin Wilcox and Marcia Muller. Still, if he never ventured into fiction writing, his non-fiction work, as both writer and editor, would still earn him a place in the P.I. genre's Hall of Fame. Besides his two tributes to some of the very worst in crime fiction (what he calls "alternative classics"), Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek, and one on western fiction (entitled Six Gun in Cheek, naturally), he's the co-author (with Marcia Muller) of 1001 Midnights. The Mystery Writers of America have nominated him for Edgar Awards several times and his work has been translated into numerous languages and he's published in almost thirty countries. He was the very first president of the Private Eye Writers of America, and he's received three Shamus Awards from them, as well as its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.