Bleeders

"Bad money turns unforgettably murderous in the twenty-seventh novel of the long-running, award-winning Nameless Detective series. A simple case of blackmail gets lethally complicated when 'Nameless,' Bill Pronzini's seasoned private-eye, exposes a nasty scam that involves junior accounts executive Jay Cohalan, his unhappy wife, and a mistress with a serious drug problem. It's the kind of case 'Nameless' likes, because bleeders -- the blackmailers, extortionists, small-time grifters, and other opportunists who prey on the weak and gullible -- sit near the top of his most-worthless-human-beings list. So he contemplates with pleasure the prospect of putting another one or two of these parasites out of commission, and then returning the $75,000 in cash to its rightful owner. 'Nameless' discovers, though, that he is not going to be able so easily to close his Cohalan file -- not when he finds his client face down in the middle of a four-poster bed with a bloody, powder-scorched hole behind the right ear. And only by a hair's breadth does 'Nameless' himself escape a similar fate. Aggrieved, cut to the psychological quick by his close brush with death, 'Nameless' embarks on a relentless hunt for his unknown assailant in San Francisco's shadowy underworld. There he encounters bleeders of every ilk -- like the loan shark Nick Kinsella, drug dealer Jackie Spoons, punch-drunk boxer Zeke Mayjack, and crankhead Charlie Bright -- before he tracks down his quarry. At a deserted backcountry road stop 'Nameless,' packing his long-unused .38, attends to the last of a bad business and, in a climax as powerful as it is unexpected, finally confronts his own demons. He maybe even conquers them."