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	• Undercurrent Bill Pronzini Backcountry Pubns, 1984 average customer review:based on 3 reviews
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The Nameless Detective is referred to that way because Mr. Pronzini never supplies a name until the fifth book in the series, Twospot, although he begins toying with the reader about this point in the fourth book in the series, Blowback. I won't reveal that name here.

Mr. Pronzini presents a world in which many men take evil actions to further selfish interests, and many women and children suffer because of that selfishness. The police and private investigators suffer along with the victims, for evil-doing has painful consequences for everyone. Mr. Pronzini's plots are complex, yet he provides plenty of clues to help you identify the evil-doer on your own. Despite the transparency of many plots, he successfully uses plot complications to keep the action interesting and fresh.

But the reason to read the books is because of the character development for the Nameless Detective. Nameless is a former police officer in San Francisco who collects pulp fiction about tough private detectives. Overcome by the evil he sees as a police officer and drawn to the complex imagery of the strong, silent hero who rights wrongs, Nameless tries to live that role as a private detective. But he has trouble getting clients, and operating as a one-man shop causes him to lead a lonely existence. In his personal life, his career keeps women at a distance. Like a medieval knight errant, he sticks to his vows and pursues doing the right thing . . . even when it doesn't pay. At the same time, he's very aware of art, culture and popular trends. And he doesn't like much of what he sees. At the same time, he's troubled by a hacking cough that cigarettes make worse . . . but doesn't really want to know what causes his phlegm to rise. He's been afraid of doctors since he saw them operating on wounded men during World War II.

The books are also written in a more sophisticated version of the pulp fiction style, employing greater style through language and plot. The whole experience is like looking at an image in a series of mirrors that reflect into infinity.

These books are a must for those who love the noir style, and the modern fans of tough detectives with a heart of gold like Spenser . . . and can live without the wise cracks and repartee.

In Undercurrent, the third book in the Nameless Detective series, a new bride, Judith Paige, asks Nameless to find out what her husband is doing on his extended weekend "business" trips that add over two hundred miles to his car's odometer. When her husband, Walter, returns from these trips, he's not very interested in her. Naturally, she fears she is being betrayed. It's a nice day in San Francisco, and Nameless doesn't want to have to look into the dirty linen of her marriage. However, he comforts himself with the thought that she may be imagining things, and takes the case. Immediately, he regrets the decision . . . knowing how much it will hurt if he finds out that Walter Paige has been cheating on her.

The next day, Nameless trails Paige to the small village of Cypress Bay on the Monterey Peninsula where Paige checks into a motel cabin. Nameless rents the next one over, and settles down to watch. He follows Paige to a near by park, where he meets a man for an extended conversation. Nameless cannot overhear what is said, even after strolling past. Then Paige returns to his cabin. When no one comes or goes through the rest of the afternoon, Nameless gets bored and decides to walk around to the beach side of Paige's cabin . . . and finds an open doorway with Paige dead inside the cabin.

Encouraged by the local police, Nameless stays on to assist in the investigation of the death . . . even after Mrs. Paige returns to San Francisco. An unexpected book in the cabin starts a trail that leads to more violence and hidden lies all across the community.

The story is very authentic to the concept of the Nameless Detective. He does most of his detecting in an effort to be helpful, not because he is being paid. The connection to literature and the author's own career are more palpable than in the earlier two stories. So there's a nice set of irony to appreciate as you realize that there's an element of Bill Pronzini in the character, Russell Dancer, who's been a prolific pulp and western short story writer and novelist for many years. It's not only Nameless who is living a dream in this book.

The story returns to the complexity that Mr. Pronzini so ably displayed in The Snatch. There are many secrets and lies to hide them in Cypress Bay, and most of the secrets and lies play unexpected roles in explaining who Walter Paige was and why he was in town.

One of the strengths of the novel is that you will feel the disgust that Nameless experiences as he explores the tawdry side of a wholesome, innocent young woman's marriage.

After you withdraw emotionally from this powerful book, think about where you should know more about others before you trust them. How can you find out without creating barriers to creating mutual trust?

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Storytelling style but too little of substance to tell

Over the years, I have read many of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" novels, whenever I could find one at a used bookstore. More recently, Amazon has allowed me to add some of the missing titles to my collection.

I have long thought of Pronzini as a skilled storyteller and my favorite among a group of able writers of light, straight, credible detective fiction which includes his wife Marcia Muller and Sue Grafton. Although sometimes weak on plot and veering at times into melodramatic action, his books' characterizations, dialogue, descriptions of varied California locales, attention to detail, deadpan humor, and smooth, easy writing style usually make them a pleasure to read. His "Nameless Detective" is low-key, competent, and serious-minded, part slob and part romantic, despite being beaten down by reality. Pronzini regularly has fun with the character by humbling him with embarrassing or bad-luck situations and tests it by putting him through the ringer of traumatic experiences.

I recently returned to the "Nameless" series following an extended absence, during which I had slogged through an almost unreadable non-"Nameless," Pronzini-Muller collaboration, Beyond The Grave. After being somewhat disappointed by two of the later "Nameless" books, Sentinels and Illusions, I turned for solace to Undercurrent, Pronzini's third, written over 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in other ways.

As far as it goes, Undercurrent is not a bad book, which is why I give it three stars. The writing is crisper, more focused, and faster-moving than some of Pronzini's other books. The tone is fresher, more energetic, and less world-weary. Although the usual humor is missing, and less attention is paid to Nameless' personal circumstances, there are enough character touches to maintain some interest. In short, the book is more of a serious, lean, straight-ahead narrative of a "Nameless" investigation -- this time hired by a newlywed to look into her husband's suspicious weekend trips to a town further along the California coast.

My problem with the book is the feeling that while the material might have sustained a short story, it is too thin and too lacking in depth, richness, and substance to fill out a full-length novel. Maybe in this early book Pronzini was still transitioning from being a short-story writer.

Despite its title and pretensions, nothing in Undercurrent cuts much beneath the surface in terms of invention, interest, intensity, or meaning. The description of the coastal town is sketchy and unmemorable, sub-par for Pronzini. The interactions between Nameless and the residents are abrupt, short, and largely unrevealing (a partial exception is Nameless's conversation with the self-described "hack" pulp fiction writer, but the writer is a fairly marginal character who can only provide hazy background). There is no nuance to the husband's character, which is drawn little better than the shadowy thugs who are his confederates. Similarly, the book treats the wife as nothing more than a poor, broken-hearted, small-town innocent taken in by a con man (and the book never really explains why it was in his character to have bothered). This comes across as simplistic, patronizing, over-sentimentalistic, tedious, and inconsistent with her so quickly acting on a sense that there was something wrong and hiring a private detective. The "hardworking, good guy" police chief, who not quite believably gives Nameless the free run of the investigation, is nothing special. The other characters flash by as mere blurs who we never get to know or care about. Much of the later part of the book is spent trying to chase down characters who have repeatedly stonewalled and either never open up or suddenly, at the last minute, tell all. The book feels more like a thin police procedural than keen, observant interrogation and detection.

The two main subplots involving the client's husband -- one a long-running personal involvement, the other a scheme for a crime -- are unconnected and far too shallow, trite, uninvolving, and predictable. Neither is particularly clever or intricate. Nor do they come to light through any especially interesting legwork or deduction (for example, a mundane verbal slip figures prominently). The crimes are all relatively crude and uninteresting, the solutions anticlimactic.

The book makes repeated references to "undercurrents being brought to the surface," but this never develops into a meaningful, insightful theme. In the end, all the book offers on that level (mainly through expansive, last-minute confessions to the police) are a few hastily described, cliche personal predicaments caused by the husband, one of which is totally irrelevant to the events in the book. It is a surprisingly lifeless, perfunctory variant on the "town-with-deep-dark-secrets" plot.

Others may (and on this site appear to have done so) uncritically praise Undercurrent simply because it recalls to them a favored, nostalgic "noir" style of writing, reciting the largely superficial plot and character developments as though they were deep and affecting. On that level, the book is competent and displays real story-telling talent.

But I found the substance of what it had to tell -- both about the crimes and about the characters -- to be disappointingly thin and unsatisfying. Overall, the book pales in comparison to my memory of Pronzini's much more vital, colorful, and intriguing book Hoodwink, about murder at a pulp writers' convention, which I think was the first Pronzini book I ever read. Having now recently struck out with both later and early Pronzini books, I can only hope that I can soon find another entry in the "Nameless" series that will recapture my fond memories of his work.

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