Bill Pronzini

His name was Roy Sands, and he had everything to look forward to. He was getting out of the service and coming home to marry his beautiful Fianc e. He had his debts paid, money in the bank, and a happy new life ahead of him. Then he disappeared.

"A skilled writer working at the top of his ability."-Denver Post In his first chronicled adventure, the Nameless detective hires on to handle the ransom payoff in a kidnapping case. Financier Louis Martinetti doesn't trust the police to deal with the man who snatched his 9-year-old son from his military prep school, nor is it clear that he trusts the members of his own household. On the appointed evening, Nameless takes a briefcase that contains $300,000 in cash to a secluded location chosen by the kidnapper. Then all hell breaks loose.

A series of seemingly random murders along a fifty-mile stretch of the rugged northern California coast, committed by an unknown dubbed by the media the Coastline Killer. A young couple with marital problems, Shelby and Jay Macklin, who decide to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's at a friend's remote coastal cottage. Two couples in a neighboring home whose relationships are thick with festering menace. A fierce winter storm that leads to a night of unrelenting terror. These are the main ingredients in Bill Pronzini's chilling and twist-filled tale about the hidden nature of crime and its motives.

Nameless had told Mitchell Krochek that 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. But gambling addiction has a way of twisting things, and the blood on Mitchell and Janice Krochek's kitchen floor was a card off the bottom of the deck. Janice is missing again, Mitchell is the prime suspect, and as Nameless searches for the truth behind her disappearance, he uncovers a vicious racket that preys on gambling fever victims "

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's life, the more inclined he is to accept the likelihood of murder--especially as the players still alive become more and more distasteful. Combine that with the situation Jake Runyon, 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.