Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini, John Michalski (Read by)

Overview

Fresh from his recent marriage, the Nameless Detective returns to what appears to be a routine investigation, an adoption case. While searching through the effects of her recently deceased mother, 23-year-old Melanie Ann Aldrich discovers some papers which show she was adopted. With her father dead as well, it seems unlikely she will ever find out why she was never told. So she hires Nameless to find her true parents.

In the course of his investigation, Nameless quickly learns why Melanie's parents never told her she was adopted and why everyone is so eager to keep it quiet. Melanie's biological mother, an emotionally disturbed young woman who died in her early twenties of a brain tumor, was raped by a then teenage delinquent named Steven Chehalis. In his attempt to piece together the past, Nameless tracks down Chehalis only to discover that he's a serial rapist responsible for a large number of rapes and at least two murders as well.

Nameless finds himself in a race to bring Chehalis to justice. Chehalis, aware of Nameless's intention, sets his psychotic sights on both his biological daughter, Melanie, and Nameless's new bride. Hardcase is Pronzini's most suspenseful mystery to date.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538538999
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	12/05/2017
Series:	Nameless Detective Mystery Series , #22
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.