Deadfall by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"...crawling away, one hand clawing at the wood, the other crooked under him in a vain effort to stem the flow of bright arterial blood. Dragging sounds, crunching sounds: trying to crawl away from death."

Yet another item in my Pronzini mini-spree: Deadfall (1986), according to Wikipedia, is the sixteenth installment in the series that now spans almost half of a century. And yet again a quibble with the critics/reviewers who named the Pronzini protagonist "Nameless Detective." He uses credit cards so I strongly doubt he is nameless; he should rather be called "Unnamed Detective."

While on a stakeout for a deadbeat who buys stuff on credit and forgets to pay, the Unnamed Detective (UD from now on) hears two shots and sees a shooter escape. Then he finds a mortally wounded man who - in his dying words - utters "Deadfall." The victim's lover hires the detective to find the killer. In what seems too much of a coincidence it turns out that the victim's brother had died half a year earlier, apparently in a drunken fall from a cliff. Thanks to his contacts on the police force UD is permitted to conduct quite an extensive investigation of the case.

In a parallel and somewhat light-hearted thread UD faces trouble from his girlfriend's ex-husband. As a reverend in a cultish Church of Holy Mission the man does not believe in divorce and wants his woman back. The comedic motifs are welcome, but it is a pity that much of the fun is based on clichés. Also, while Kerry - the detective's girlfriend - is a vivid and well-drawn character, other female characters are quite one-dimensional and portrayed through the prism of pop psychology.

The denouement is logical and plausible and confirms the unfortunately banal observation that human weakness and potential for depravity have no bounds. Deadfall is not quite as good as Hardcase or The Vanished but it is a good read with an interesting story. I am still looking forward to more Pronzini.

Two-and-three-quarter stars.

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