Quarry

Sometimes a reader can take a good piece of writing, like QUARRY, and suck the life out of it with a bland portrayal of the lead character. This is one of those cases. QUARRY is moody story that captures both the ambiance of rural California and the slick impersonality of San Francisco in a gritty detective yarn with a real undertone of malevolence. Sadly, Nick Sullivan plays the hero, The Nameless Detective, so blandly it's hard to believe Nameless has a tough bone in his body, though he's thrown into physical danger on a regular basis. Interestingly, Sullivan breathes life into the minor characters, having an easier time with accents, mannerisms, and tics in these supporting roles. If this production were a full-cast production with committed actors making strong choices, it would be memorable listen. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

December 2, 1991
Pronzini's ( Breakdown ) brisk, efficient, action-packed mystery is set on the earthquake-ravaged San Francisco waterfront and in the now-arid salad-bowl country to the south. Here the Nameless Detective hunts for a methodical, brutal stranger who is pursuing withdrawn Grady Haas, 31, daughter of rancher Arlo Haas, the detective's old friend. Secretive Grady won't tell why she has suddenly left her job as an insurance adjuster specializing in marine claims and returned to the Salinas Valley . Nameless finds that her San Francisco apartment has been thoroughly tossed. All he has to go on are the three claims Grady had been investigating and her ex-boyfriend's savage beating by a stranger seeking Grady's whereabouts. Nameless may lack a moniker but he's full of character, describing himself as a ``throwback--the kind of man who hates progress, mistrusts technology, and never quite feels comfortable in any place where he can't see or touch some small piece of the past.'' Still haunted by the horror described in Shackles (1988), in which he was chained for three months to the wall of an isolated mountain cabin, Nameless now must endure a new ordeal, being locked inside a burning building. The book's exciting final scene nicely plays on the title's double meanings.