John Frederick Quincannon, a former United States Secret Service agent, and Sabina Carpenter, one of the first female Pinkerton operatives, joined forces to form the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Their various cases take them all over the American West in the 1890s. Now they're back in four new adventures. In "The Bughouse Caper," Quincannon matches wits with Sherlock Holmes to solve a series of burglaries and a baffling locked-room murder. "The Cloud Cracker" finds Quincannon called to a small California town to expose an itinerant rainmaker as a charlatan and confidence man, only to run into an unexpected murder. In "Medium Rare" Quincannon and Sabina attend a seance, but more is involved than exposing psychic phenomena as fakery, since they are witnesses to a murder that seems to have been supernatural. "Quincannon in Paradise" is set in the Hawaiian Islands, with the detective on the trail of a pair of swindlers.
Bill Pronzini and his wife, Marcia Muller, make their home in Petaluma, California.
