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Summary
Summary
Old Man Hass is concerned by the near-catatonic behavior of his daughter, Grady. The young woman showed up at his doorstep a few days earlier, refused to admit that anything was wrong, and has been wandering around the farm, not talking and barely eating. The Nameless Detective thinks the old farmer would have been better off calling a psychiatrist-but he's at least willing to ask a few questions. As Nameless begins to investigate, he discovers that Grady's affliction is more than just a broken heart: she has been the victim of brutal psychological torture. In order to save her, he's not only going to have to find her tormentor, he's going to have to call on his own darkest impulses and turn the quarry into the victim.
Author Notes
Bill Pronzini was born in Petaluma, California on April 13, 1943. His first novel, The Stalker, was published in 1971. He is best known for his creation of the Nameless Detective Mystery series, as well as several westerns and novels of dark suspense. He has been a full time writer since 1969. 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 has won numerous awards including three Shamus Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Mystery Writers of America. His book Snowbound received the Grand Prix de la Litterature Policiere, as the best crime novel published in France in 1988. Pronzini has established himself as a master of the Western novel as well as earning a name for himself in the dark fiction genre.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pronzini's ( Breakdown ) brisk, efficient, action-packed mystery is set on the earthquake-ravaged San Francisco waterfront and in the now-arid salad-bowl country to the south. Here the Nameless Detective hunts for a methodical, brutal stranger who is pursuing withdrawn Grady Haas, 31, daughter of rancher Arlo Haas, the detective's old friend. Secretive Grady won't tell why she has suddenly left her job as an insurance adjuster specializing in marine claims and returned to the Salinas Valley . Nameless finds that her San Francisco apartment has been thoroughly tossed. All he has to go on are the three claims Grady had been investigating and her ex-boyfriend's savage beating by a stranger seeking Grady's whereabouts. Nameless may lack a moniker but he's full of character, describing himself as a ``throwback--the kind of man who hates progress, mistrusts technology, and never quite feels comfortable in any place where he can't see or touch some small piece of the past.'' Still haunted by the horror described in Shackles (1988), in which he was chained for three months to the wall of an isolated mountain cabin, Nameless now must endure a new ordeal, being locked inside a burning building. The book's exciting final scene nicely plays on the title's double meanings. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
When Grady Haas, depressed and uncommunicative, moves back in with her dad, he asks Nameless to find out what's wrong. Suspecting nothing more than a soured love affair that she'll soon get over, Nameless is surprised to learn that the lover is a true mystery man--with several aliases: Blackwell, Jack King, David Jones. And that he's gone underground. Who is he really, and how did Grady, a claims adjuster at Intercoastal Insurance, meet him? The answers lie in Savarese Importing, but when Nameless is lured there, the owner has been murdered, the door clangs shut behind him, and the snap, crackle, and pop of an arsonist's handiwork warm things up. Nameless escapes (did you doubt it?) and tracks the arsonist to a gravel quarry for a vigilante justice ending. Pronzini, who since Nameless's kidnapping (Shackles) has been pioneering the noir-kvetch novel, whines more than he plots here. Add to this the unappealing wedding-mania that partner Eberhardt is experiencing and the outcome is bathos--plus reader annoyance.
Booklist Review
It isn't easy being Pronzini's Nameless Detective. Pronzini, along with Motown's Loren Estleman, represents the reactionary side of the hardboiled game: angst in abundance, clipped talk, and a gutter-level view of life predominate. In addition, Pronzini manages a difficult feat in Quarry: making the tension of a missing-person case work without the person actually being missing. Emotionally, though, Grady Hass is lost. She's left her job with no explanation, her apartment has been ~searched, her former fiance has been roughed up badly, and she's being tailed somewhere in the hills outside San Francisco by someone vicious. Now Nameless himself is tailing Grady at Pop's request (when he isn't suffering claustrophobic flashbacks to his period of captivity in a previous case, and battling his partner, whose upcoming nuptials are rapidly becoming an event of daunting magnificence). Pronzini can get a shade overwrought--the Steinbeck-drenched references to the rural locale get wearying--but his detective is a welcome journey into yesterday, where a shamus could bend the law and not have to agonize about it for too long afterwards. ~--Peter Robertson
