Schemers
by Bill Pronzini
Forge, March 2009, $24.95

Once more the 2008 MWA Grand Master juggles multiple viewpoints and plotlines, as the members of the thriving, but so far still nameless, detective agency follow their separate but thematically linked cases. The San Francisco agency boasts another operative (alluded to briefly) and even a second location, but the heart and soul of the agency is still Nameless (his co-workers may refer to him as “Bill” but he’ll always be Nameless to me, as in fact he has been for most of this long, long-running series). Even semi-retired, he remains a hands-on kind of boss, stepping in to aid fledgling operative and office manager Tamara or seasoned ex-cop Jake Runyon when the spirit moves him. And the spirit certainly moves him when Barney Rivera, the obnoxious and manipulative chief claims adjuster for Great Western Insurance whom Nameless cut ties with years ago, goads the detective into personally accepting a seemingly impossible case: solving the disappearance of eight extremely rare signed mystery novels, worth almost half a million dollars, from the library of a rich collector. It’s an offer he knows he should refuse, but Nameless lets himself be talked into it. When the locked-room burglary abruptly becomes a locked-room murder, Nameless realizes he’s being set up. But by who? Meanwhile, Jake is out on the road, dealing with another schemer—an anonymous stalker preying on two middle-aged brothers. The mysterious assailant’s tactics have moved rapidly from desecrating their late father’s grave to burglary and personal attacks, and yet neither brother, both quiet, unassuming family men, can name anyone bearing them any sort of grudge. The theme, of course, is manipulation, and Pronzini, with his tight, terse prose style and sparse but always sharp characterization, brings it all home in a thematically and narratively satisfying conclusion. As always. Pronzini, it turns out, is quite the schemer himself.