Showing results by narrator "Nick Sullivan" in All Categories

For each of the detectives at the agency, a betrayal becomes not only the driving force behind an investigation, but the source of the kind of resolve that cannot be derailed by threats. Tamara's case began as something personal explodes as an investigation of her former lover leads to a scam that bilks charities. For Nameless, trying to find out who is gaslighting an old woman only exposes the ugly side of family. We're told that there are seven deadly sins; not on the list is the deadliest of them all: betrayal.

The mysterious death of a Catholic priest has been met with suspicion by his brother, Thomas Knight - and the grave silence of church authorities. All Thomas knows is that his brother died in the Philippines, the last stop of an international trek researching the history of Christian symbols. But Thomas and curator Deborah Miller aren't alone in retracing the priest's perilous and labyrinthine path. Their every move is being shadowed by a fanatical cabal of agents who are desperate to hide the astronishing secret Thomas's brother stumbled upon - and willing to kill to keep it buried in shadows of history forever.

When Toot doesn't return home to Woodcock Pocket as expected, Puddle becomes worried and decides he must go find him. His search leads him on a remarkable adventure, and to new summits of friendship. As ever, Holly Hobbie's extraordinary watercolor illustrations are at once funny and moving as...

Two novellas and two short stories featuring Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Bill Pronzini's iconic Nameless Detective. Zigzag is an original novella in which a safe and simple accident investigation becomes the unraveling of a twisted murder scheme.

Theodore Roosevelt is best remembered as America's prototypical "cowboy" president - a Rough Rider who derived his political wisdom from a youth spent in the untamed American West. During his early political career, Roosevelt took on local Republican factions and Tammany Hall Democrats alike, proving his commitment to reform at all costs.

David Virden's case is simple enough: Namless must find his ex-wife and deliver some papers to her. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and slams the door. His colleague, Tamara, tells Nameless that Virden threatens to sue, stops payment on his checks, and claims that the woman they located isn't his wife. Then he disappears and his fiancée hires Nameless to find out why. Clearly, someone is trying to make Nameless the monkey in the middle. Then things take a decidedly more deadly turn....

Everyone's mourning in the nameless detective's office, and he doesn't like it one bit. For his own part, Nameless is spending more and more time at the cemetery, and at home he's hit a brick wall in his relationship with his wife. He'd rather be managing his pulp magazine collection and battling his weight, but, unfortunately, life won't cut Nameless a break.

Old Man Hass is concerned by the near-catatonic behavior of his daughter, Grady. The young woman showed up at his doorstep a few days earlier, refused to admit that anything was wrong, and has been wandering around the farm, not talking, barely eating. The Nameless Detective thinks the old farmer would have been better off calling a psychiatrist - but he's at least willing to ask a few questions....

Nameless wasn't supposed to come into the office on Mondays; he wasn't supposed to answer the phone. On this Monday, he did both. The call was from Barney Rivera - once a friend, now despised - at Great Western Insurance. Against his better judgment, Nameless agreed to meet with him.

The investigation was relatively simple: a multimillionaire rare books collector had reported the theft of eight volumes, worth a half million dollars. From a locked library. To which he has the only key.

Macrae is living pretty close to the edge in the inhospitable rush of Manhattan. He and Charlie make their bread, such as it is, by a fairly clever scheme of forcing their vitims to withdraw money from bank cash machines. They become involved in darker matters, and Macrae indulges in an incomparably brutal act of vengeance, which is not really his style. The pair moves on to Baltimore, where they hook up with a black ex-con called Porter, from whom Macrae begins to learn "the perils of living... an unexamined life."

So what if Nameless can't get his girlfriend, Kerry, to marry him? So what if he can't talk his partner, Eberhardt, out of his bitter funk? Skies are sunny, and the Nameless Detective wants them to stay that way. So he decides to do an old man a favor and find his missing granddaughter, Gianna. But no one said it would be easy. It seems Gianna's roommate is turning tricks, and Nameless' search quickly leads him to a pimp, a murder, and into a dark pit of human perversion.

Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren't all heroes. Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He's a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything -or anyone - could be the fuse to ignite them.

Young, newly rich Verity Daniels claims to be receiving threatening demands for money from a mysterious caller. When Jake Runyon agrees to investigate, it seems a relatively simple matter to expose the extortionist by setting a trap for him. The case, however, is nowhere near as clear-cut as it first appears. And Verity Daniels is nowhere near the helpless victim she pretends to be. A series of surprise revelations culminates in Runyon being falsely accused of a crime that never happened.

Jump to the stars! Join the Solar Fleet! The Solar Fleet faces just two problems: one, the alien blockade that prevents any ship from leaving the solar system, and two, the United Monarchy of Europe, which is tying up most of the Solar Fleet's resources, thus preventing them from attacking the blockade.

Almek Manning is 18 and wishes to join the Solar Fleet as a midshipman and train at the Academy. However, Almek has a few problems of his own to overcome before he can go to the Academy, the first of which is to escape from a United Monarchy of Europe detention facility.

Nashville private investigator Jared McKean has a son with Down syndrome, a best friend with AIDS, an ex-wife he can’t seem to fall out of love with, and a weakness for women in jeopardy - until one frames him for murder. His DNA and fingerprints are found at the murder scene, his voice is on the victim’s answering machine, and the victim was killed with a bullet from his gun.

In the days when hunger could be cultivated and practiced as an art form, the individuals who practiced it were often put on show for all to see. One man who was so devout in his pursuit of hunger pushed against the boundaries set by the circus that housed him and strived to go longer than 40 days without food. As interest in his art began to fade, he pushed the boundaries even further. In this short story about one man's plight to prove his worth, Franz Kafka illustrates the themes of self-hatred, dedication, and spiritual yearning.

Avi and Sebastian have worked together for years as an extraction team, sabotaging power plants funded by corrupt governments. When an assignment takes the unstoppable duo to Zimbabwe, the deadly aftermath follows them long after the mission ends. They escape with a stash of gold, intent on depositing it in various tropical scuba dive locations for safe-keeping. But when some of the gold goes missing, Avi’s boss turns on her.

Nameless had told Mitchell Krochek he'd do whatever he could to find his missing wife, Janice. She'd run away before - propelled by a gambling fever that grew ever higher - and Mitch had always taken her back. This time, when Nameless, his partner, Tamara, and the agency's chief operative, Jake Runyon, finally found her in a sleazy San Francisco hotel, she demanded a divorce. A few days later, a beaten and bloody Janice stumbled into the agency begging to go home. No one is surprised when, soon after her homecoming, she disappears again.

The police said it was an accident. The dead woman's sister said it was murder...and that she knew who did it. Nameless isn't certain, but the more he learns about Nancy Mathias' life, the more inclined he is to accept the possibility that her sister is right. Combine that with the situation Jake Runyan, one of the agency's partners, is facing as he searches for a young man who is either a murderer or a victim, and life at their San Francisco detective agency has everyone on edge.

Life is speaking to us all the time; it’s full of funny, sad, perplexing and downright astounding stories all day, everyday. We are not only participating in these stories, but creating them every nano second of our Mind, Body, Spirit existence. All to often we let life simply swallow us up and our experiences seem to disappear in a myriad of systems and structures, rules, routines, feelings, actions and thoughts. It’s so important that we all stop and listen to what we are saying to ourselves and through the way we are living our lives and what the world is saying back to us!