narrator of twenty-five subsequent novels published over more than three decades, surely one of the most extensive and extended of all the mystery series.
Asked why Nameless had no name and why the author had taken that approach (just as Robert B. Parker has often been asked the first name of his series detective known only as “Spenser”) Pronzini has said that this character is so close in many ways to Pronzini’s own personality and interests that the name should be obvious. (He has also noted that the character is in fact named once, offhandedly, in his collaborative novel with Marcia Muller, DOUBLE.) Nameless’s spiritual odyssey has in many ways parallelled the author’s one, Pronzini has said, and to know the character or author is really to know them both.
As a mainstream novelist, Pronzini has published novels such as SNOWBOUND, MASQUES and BLUE LONESOME which have shown great technical range and detail; he has also published many science fiction stories as well as one science fiction novel, PROSE BOWL, in collaboration with Barry N. Malzberg. With his wife, the successful mystery novelist Marcia Muller, Pronzini now lives in his town of birth, Petaluma, California.
