Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Vixen -- Bill Pronzini

Vixen is billed (no pun intended) as a "Nameless Detective Novel," but we fans of the series know that Nameless has had a name ever since Twospot.  Not that it matters.  We'll just call him Nameless.

Nameless tells us in a brief prologue that before the case he's about to relate, he'd never run into a genuine femme fatale, one of those "whose brand of evil would be like nothing I could ever have imagined."  This time, though, he does.

Cory Beckett is her name, and the case starts off simply enough.  She wants Nameless and his agency to find her brother, who's jumped bail in a the case of a stolen necklace.  She doesn't want anyone to speak to her brother, though, when he's found.  She just wants to be informed of his location.   Things don't work out that way.  To say that complications ensue would be understating the case, and the story gets darker as it goes along, all the way to the end, which is very dark, indeed.

At the same time we read the story about Cory Beckett, we also get other stories about Nameless's family, about Jake Runyon, about a man named Frank Chaleen.  Pronzini brings all this in with his usual style and skill, and the stories add a deceptive depth to the proceedings, which, by the way, are concluded in about the same length as a Gold Medal novel from the 1950s.  It's a pleasure to read a book that's not padded out to doorstop size yet which has enough plot to satisfy anybody.  The Nameless series is one of the best private-eye series ever written, and Vixen is a fine addition to the canon.

10 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

Absolutely. I read this a few weeks ago - can't believe I beat you to it-and thought it was one of the more memorable recent Nameless books.

Jeff

Jeff Meyerson said...

OK, I take it back. I didn't read it. I read FEMME, the Cemetary Dance novella that was obviously expanded into this book. I'll read it soon.

Jeff

mybillcrider said...

Well, you were still ahead of me.

Mel Odom said...

with only 40 pages difference from FEMME, I wonder how much is different. And why Bill didn't write a new one.

Bill Pronzini said...

Thanks for all the kind words, Bill. Much appreciated. Pleased that you enjoyed the novel.

To Mel: Actually, the book is quite a bit more than 40 pages longer than the Cemetery Dance novella, which has large type, numerous "chapter" breaks, and lots of white space. VIXEN is not just an expansion, it's a substantial revision and restructuring of FEMME -- a much better version, IMHO. I wrote it for that reason, and because it seemed the proper venue for the personal backstory.

I seem to be in something of a minimalist stage with Nameless these days. Short novels, as Bill pointed out, and novella-length stories. The next book in the series, ZIGZAG, contains two original novellas as well as two shorts from EQMM.

mybillcrider said...

Thanks for the comment, Bill. Looking forward to the next one, as usual.

Mel Odom said...

Thanks, Bill and Bill! I've been reading the series since SNATCH. This one caught me off guard because it was so similar to FEMME, but I've got it waiting in my iPad queue. I knew there had to be something more to the book. I've always enjoyed Nameless, but I miss some of the pulp magazines background.

mybillcrider said...

Mel, there's a bit of the pulp mags background in this one. Just a tad.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Bill Pronzini is one of the few modern exemplars that prove a book doesn't need to be 400 pages to be worth reading. Quite the contrary is usually true. Looking forward to this and the next one, as usual.

Jeff

Mel Odom said...

Like Bill (Crider), I appreciate the "thin" novels these days. When I was a kid, I could sit down and read a book in a day or two. And on rainy days I could read three or four books. I miss being able to dive into a novel, get all amped up as I turned the pages, and be able to finish without ending up dead on my feet. They were more immersive than television/movies, but not a whole lot longer. The novellas being put out are a good length these days. And the Nameless books are great! Easy to schedule and enjoy.