Thursday 14 May 2015

Bindlestiff

The tenth Nameless book starts out with our hero in a fair bit of financial difficulty himself. With no licence he has no income.His office is gone and worst of all he's had to fall back on his only way of making enough cash to feed himself, namely selling off some of his precious pulp collection starting with some of his less loved editions. But things are about to change. Ex-cop best friend Eberhardt has had a hand in getting Nameless' licence restored but not without asking for something in return. He wants to go into partnership. But Nameless is a lone-wolf.
His first case back involves tracking down a hobo (bindestiff) rider of the tracks. The trail leads to a town called Oroville in Butte County. It helps the book to be set in a real location, the local colour and history add a bit flavour to a fairly lifeless plot. The location moves on to the wine soaked Sonoma County, which Nameless cites as his ideal retirement location, though to my mind I doubt he'll ever have funds enough to finance such an end even if he was the retiring kind.
Not the strongest title in the series. Pronzini's plotting suffers from having to be played out by a small group of fairly two dimensional supporting characters.

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