Illusions: A "Nameless Detective" Novel [Hardcover]

Bill Pronzini (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002

Following his success in Sentinels, "Nameless", who has been praised as the "thinking person's detective", is back! Caught between two difficult investigations - one personal and one professional. "Nameless" has become increasingly obsessed with his investigation into the suicide of his estranged friend and former partner, Eberhardt, when he is hired by a Santa Fe businessman to find his ex-wife. The job soon takes on frightening dimensions when the client turns up dead. Then disturbing facts about the couple's past begin to emerge. Both cases lead "Nameless" down a twisted path strewn with the illusions people adopt for themselves and perceive in others. Ultimately "Nameless" is torn between the two cases and must make a painful choice. Illusions is a superb psychological mystery that delves deeply into human imagination.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Santa Fe businessman Ira Erskine hires San Francisco private eye Nameless to find his missing ex-wife, Janice, who may have relocated to the Bay Area. Erskine wants to offer Janice one last chance to see her only child, who is dying of leukemia. Nameless accepts the case, partially to get his mind off the suicide of his ex-partner and ex^-best friend, Eberhardt. Within days after Nameless finds the missing woman, Erskine is found dead in a hotel room near his ex-wife's new home. While that nightmare is unfolding, Nameless tries to understand why Eb took his own life. Perhaps it wasn't suicide after all. As the cases progress, they parallel one another with an eerie similarity that forces Nameless to reexamine his previously unshakable moral certitude and self-proclaimed position as a sentinel of black-and-white justice. The Nameless series is 26 entries and almost 30 years old, and Nameless himself is edging toward 60. The sheer duration of the series, as well as its increasing depth and the steady maturation of Nameless--both chronologically and emotionally--represent a stunning and unique achievement in crime fiction. The series, the character, and this book are not to be missed. Nameless has become an American treasure. Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Think the death of the Nameless Detective's (Sentinels, 1996, etc.) embittered ex-partner Eberhardt will finally close the book on the bad blood between the two? You don't know brooding Nameless, who, seeing Eberhardt's pathological moodiness as the mirror of his own, won't rest till he knows exactly what happened to make Eberhardt shoot himself in the chest. But soon his sorrowing investigation into Eberhardt's last assignment, a series of inside-job thefts from a pair of loutish liquor distributors, gets interrupted by a new assignment of his own: finding the ex-wife of Santa Fe financial consultant Ira Erskine, armed only with a postcard to a female friend saying that she's in the Bay Area and desperate to find the woman who left him and their hometown four years ago before their son dies of leukemia. So Nameless, continuing his exhaustive tour of northern California, heads out to the wine country in Alexander Valley and finds Janice Erskine just in time for his client to get shot as dead as his ex-partner. You can't help thinking the two cases will have something to do with each other, and so they do, but not at all in the way you expect. Characteristically overblown but solid midgrade work from Nameless, even if the old guy (now pushing 60) is awfully full of illusions for a veteran of 23 earlier cases. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: Replica Books (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735102228
• ISBN-13: 978-0735102224
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,315,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting to the Bottom of It, November 24, 2003

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Illusions: A "Nameless Detective" Novel (Hardcover)

Long before Nameless and Eberhardt were partners, Spade and Archer were. Even though Sam Spade didn't have much respect for Archer, he knew that you had to avenge your partner's killer. In a similar way, Eberhardt's suicide hits Nameless hard. They haven't spoken for years, but they had been friends and partners for many years before that. What has happened to Eberhardt to make him want to kill himself? Nameless has to know. What he learns shocks him to the core, and makes him realize that he didn't know his old partner so well after all.

While this is going on, Ira Erskine hires Nameless to find his ex-wife. Their young son is dying of leukemia and wants to see his mother before he dies. Something about Erskine bothers Nameless's assistant, Tamara Corbin, but Nameless takes the case anyway. He quickly locates the ex-wife and lets Erskine know where to find her. Soon, Nameless has a second jolt when Erskine ends up dead while cleaning his gun. What really happened?

In both cases, Nameless realizes that he has been very naive . . . and that his naiveté has been dangerous to others. Although he cannot right the wrongs, he has to find out what really happened. The answers make him sick to the deepest part of his soul. And he has to decide what to do with the unpleasant truth.

This is an outstanding book which stands on its own, but you will enjoy it more if you read Dragonfire, Shackles, Quarry and Hardcase first.

As I finished reading the book, I also began to wonder where my rosy views about others hide a darker truth. This book can change your whole outlook on life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is a very good series, I didn't find Illusions as up to standard, July 13, 2005

By 

clifford "akitonmyers" (Portland, OR, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Illusions: A "Nameless Detective" Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) (Audio Cassette)

Perhaps I read too many Pronzini's too quickly. For some reason Illusions was just not that great of a read in my opinion. I felt like Pronzini was kind of just offering up a half-baked effort and in my opinion it kind of fell a little flat.

First of all this book centers around morality. This morality is a shady sort that is ambiguous, and in the end both cases here are not as difficult to digest as the author would like to make out. I found myself thinking that the two mysteries here were not really up to par with the other Nameless books in this series. The tales did not force Nameless to undergo change in anything other than a superficial level. Also, the suspense level never really ramped up at all, this was more of a case of going through the motions.

I think that Pronzini's Nameless is one of the better PI's out there in the world of literature. I have enjoyed several of these books, especially the later ones (which is unusual in serial pulp). But as with any long running series, the author is bound to produce efforts not quite up to others, and I think that this is one of those.

3.0 out of 5 stars Mildly entertaining but the melodramatic, cobbled-together plot lines fall well short of the author's best work, July 25, 2007

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viewer (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Illusions: A "Nameless Detective" Novel (Hardcover)

Over the years, I have read many of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" novels, whenever I could find one at a used bookstore. More recently, Amazon has allowed me to add some of the missing titles to my collection. I have long thought of Pronzini as a skilled storyteller and my favorite among a group of able writers of light, straight, credible detective fiction which includes his wife Marcia Muller and Sue Grafton.

Although sometimes weak on plot and veering at times into melodramatic action, Pronzini's characterizations, dialogue, descriptions of varied California locales, attention to detail, deadpan humor, and smooth, easy writing style almost always make his "Nameless Detective" books a pleasure to read. "Nameless" is low-key, competent, and serious-minded, part slob and part romantic. Pronzini regularly has fun with the character by humbling him with embarrassing or bad-luck situations and tests it by putting him through the ringer of traumatic experiences.

Illusions marries a story about Nameless's ex-friend/partner Eberhardt killing himself (alluded to at very end of Sentinels, the prior book in the series) with a story about a (soon-to-be-dead) client who tells Nameless a sympathetic story and asks him to find the client's estranged wife. The plot entails unsettling discoveries about the characters and involves battered women. After a talky ending testing his wife's conventions about law and justice, Nameless wrestles with what, if anything, to share with the police about what he has learned on the two cases, and ends the book proclaiming the death to all of his illusions.

Pronzini's skills as a story teller are on display to some extent, and the detective story shows some careful attention to detail. But the detection comes off as somewhat contrived, belated busy work in a story in which the two main plot lines are fairly shallow and do not work very well together. The "double substitution" plot point used in the book is confusing and not very effective. The characters are largely unmemorable, and Nameless's new assistant, Tamara Corbin, put to good use in Sentinels, fades into insignificance here. The book's description of the client's interactions with his ex-wife goes to a melodramatic, maudlin, morbid extreme, rather than being persuasively effective.

The pretensions to a grand theme fall a bit flat because neither of the two plot lines is effectively developed. And the book itself skimps on recognizing the implications of Nameless's actions -- he not only considers withholding theories from the police but also physical evidence that would affect their ability to solve the cases for themselves (witness the jury duty "stub" that Nameless "pockets").

The book is solid enough work by an old hand to round up to a three-star rating. But overall, I agree with another reviewer that there is something of a slack feel and hollow ring to the book's two story lines, that they do not gel with each other into an effective whole, and that they do not adequately support the momentous theme sounded at the end. To lavish, as some supposed reviewers appear to have done, a reflexive five-star rating on this book based on its general writing style or fondness for the series overall would be lazy and sloppy, and, more importantly, would not give a fair impression of Pronzini's best work.