Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #585936 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-27
• Released on: 2008-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Once again Pronzini, soon to be designated an MWA Grand Master, captures the quiet despair of his characters' lives in the 33rd entry in his noirish whodunit series featuring the Nameless Detective (after 2007's Savages). Mitchell Krochek, who's worried about the gambling addiction of his wife, Janice, hires Nameless to trace Janice, who's disappeared for the fourth time in four years. When Jake Runyon, Nameless's associate, traces Janice to an apartment hotel near their San Francisco office, Nameless and Jake decide to honor Janice's request not to reveal her location to her husband. Later, a battered Janice shows up at the detective agency's office, where she agrees to go home, only to vanish again amid circumstances strongly indicating foul play. In an affecting subplot, Jake investigates the mysterious beating of a devoted churchgoer's son. This insightful novel will appeal to those who like the mean streets portrayed with understatement and subtlety rather than gory violence. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Pronzini’s Nameless Detective and his San Francisco investigative agency have survived for more than three decades because of a never-ending supply of people who screw up their lives. Nameless used to operate alone but now runs an agency with the varied talents (and narrative points of view) of a twentysomething black woman and a fortysomething ex-cop. Nameless himself, of course, remains the moral center of the agency and the series, as well as the lead narrator. Fever focuses on how one woman’s addiction to internet gambling leads her from her suburban home to a derelict San Francisco rooming house, where she turns tricks to finance her next run at the virtual casino. It also touches on other fevers that can consume people’s lives. Pronzini is justly celebrated as a chronicler of San Francisco, but this novel also showcases his deft touch with interiors—how an unmade bed, the stench of cigarette smoke, or an antiseptically clean and empty home can say volumes about the tail ends of desperate lives. Another Pronzini winner. --Connie Fletcher

Review

Customer Reviews

"Nobody knew anybody, when you got right down to it."
Bill Pronzini's "Fever" is about the compulsions that drive people to the edge--and occasionally straight over. The Nameless Detective (whose first name we now know is Bill) is in his sixties and semi-retired. He runs a San Francisco-based private investigation agency along with his partner, Tamara Corbin. His best investigator is the morose workaholic Jake Runyon, a former cop for the Seattle PD and a man in deep mourning since the death of his beloved wife, Colleen. Known as "Bloodhound Jake," Runyon's "instincts were sharper, his tenacity greater" than anyone Bill has ever encountered; he works long hours to avoid the unbearable loneliness of his empty apartment. Jake and his colleagues will need all of their investigative skills to solve the difficult problems that lie ahead.

The first case involves thirty-three year old Janice Krochek, a high-strung woman who has a history of disappearing repeatedly from her million-dollar Oakland Hills home. Janice's fever is Internet gambling and she's got it bad. Now she has vanished again, and her exasperated and self-centered husband, Mitchell, hires Bill's firm to find her. Jake locates Janice; Bill and Tamara confront her about her high-stakes gambling. In addition, they can't help but notice that in an effort to get her hands on even more money, Janice has come into contact with some extremely sleazy individuals. She refuses to accept the fact that her compulsive gambling is a sickness that needs treatment. To her it's "the sweetest high there is...the action, the excitement...there's nothing else like it." Even though Mitch claims that he wants her to return home, Janice adamantly refuses to come back.

Runyon's next client is Rose Youngblood, a widowed black woman in her fifties who works in a college admissions office and is active in her church and community. Rose wants the agency to find out why her twenty-six year old son, Brian, has suddenly undergone a radical personality change. She insists that Brian always had good values, held down a steady job, and seemed to have a bright future. Recently, he has begun to behave secretively and is frequently agitated. Furthermore, someone beat him up badly and he stubbornly refuses to identify the perpetrator. After looking into Brian's finances, Runyon learns that the young man has gone deeply into in debt. What caused Brian's abrupt transformation?

Jake's life is further complicated by an encounter with a deformed woman who hides half her face with a scarf. He rescues her from some teenaged bullies and subsequently looks into her good eye and sees something that makes him empathize with her: pain "raw and naked, the kind that goes marrow-deep, soul deep." Jake wants to get to know this woman better; connecting with someone who understands suffering as he does might help him heal his own wounds.

Bill Pronzini has a smooth, no-frills writing style marked by sharply-written dialogue and changes in point of view (first person when Bill is speaking, third person in Tamara and Jake's chapters). Pronzini knows San Francisco intimately, and during the many interviews that he and his colleagues conduct in various parts of the city, he brings the people and streets of San Francisco to vibrant life. This is not a feel-good novel. As the detectives close in on the answers they seek, they make some shocking discoveries. "Fever" is a gritty and horrifying look at the inexplicable obsessions that overtake people, with tragic results.

After reading almost all of the nameless books, this entry is good, but not the best
I started collecting the Nameless series a few years ago. Its a great series with evolving characters not stuck in a place, situation, or time period. "Fever" is comprised of two stories and primarily engages in the lives of three protagonists: Nameless (the detective this series has been following and whom is now sliding into retirement of a sort), Tamara (nameless' partner, Tamara sits in the office and does the computer work while holding the office together), and Jake Runyon (an ex cop who has been in a funk for several years since his second wife died).

One thing thats nice about this series is that from one novel to the next, you will be given different stylistic authorship approaches. Pronzini likes to try his hand at either exploring his own boundaries or those of other authors. Here in "Fever", Pronzini takes a generous helping from the 70's work of Ed McBain and his 87th precinct stories. I say this because McBain would often during this period break his stories into two parts, both of these were very simple small mysteries, and use the pages to explore his characters who would wax philosophically on a myriad of topics.

What you get with Fever, is not a very complicated or hard hitting entry into this series. You will follow the great protagonists from situation to situation as they think about life in general. The story gets its title "fever" from the addiction of one of its hard luck characters who has a gambling 'fever'. An addiction so strong that she would do basically anything to get one more online hand to play with.

Several of Pronzini's books over the last 10 years have consistently been on the extraordinary side of things. I would not mix Fever in with those. And thus I am stripping it of one star. That aside, this is an enjoyable book and I would say the series is alive and well.

Fever
"Fever" is the 32nd Nameless Detective novel by Bill Pronzini. The Nameless series is one of the longest running in detective fiction. Once a lone wolf detective, Nameless now has a name (Bill), a partner (Tamara), and 2 operatives in his agency. The agency is hired by Mitchell Krochek to find his missing wife Janice. They find her rather easily, but she refuses to go home. Janice has a bad case of gambling fever and may be involved with some unsavory characters. When someone close to the Krochek's is killed, Nameless realizes this case is more complex than he once thought. The other case is a pro bono case for Jake Runyon. Rose Youngblood's son Brian has been beaten up and she feared for his life. The more Runyon investigates, the more bizarre the case becomes. Pronzini is one of those rare authors that puts the reader at the scene of the action. His writing is clear and concise. "Fever" is a strong addition to this series and is highly recommended.