Review: "Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini"

 

Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories by Bill Pronzini Stark House, 2024   Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini is the story collection I’ve been waiting for—without realizing it until now. Included are 26 of Pronzini’s best stories, selected by the author himself (and who am to argue?), originally published in magazines like Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and New Black Mask between 1967 and 2023. Which is to say, these tales are representative of Pronzini’s entire criminous career from his Nameless Detective, featured in 10 of the stories, his standalone work, which total 15, and a solitary tale in the Quincannon & Carpenter historical private eye series. My usual reading modus operandi is a preference for standalone tales—shorts, novels, and everything in between—and this collection is no different. The standalones are my favorites. A good example is “Opportunity”—which is the earliest tale in the collection from 1967—about an honest cop facing an expensive medical treatment and a moral dilemma when a chance to siphon more off the streets than his salary arises. “Proof of Guilt,” published in 1973, is a nifty variation on an impossible crime that left me with a smile. “Smuggler’s Island”—published in 1977—is one of my favorite stories because it beautifully intertwines a past crime with a present crime. There is an uninhabited island and a murder, too. “Liar’s Dice,” from 1992, is a brilliantly conceived psychological thriller with a dark bent about a dice game and deciphering truth from lies. And those are only a few of the standouts! Now for the Nameless tales, and despite my preference for standalones, each of these is a gem of serial private detection. You see, I really do like Nameless a bunch because Pronzini has an ability to keep the character fresh with intriguing plots and expanding characterization. “Thin Air,” which was published in 1979, is a great old school detective story about a scorned wife, a thief, and a cheating husband. A murder happens, too, and while it is close to an impossible murder, Nameless takes care of it with pulpy pizazz. “Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern,” from 1988, is a little different because the crime—a tavern is held up—happens while Nameless is drinking a beer and chatting with the friendly barkeep. But that’s only the start and it ends somewhere else entirely. “Stakeout” finds Nameless doing a skip-trace on a deadbeat dad that turns into a waiting game that goes sideways and takes all of Nameless’ deductive prowess to find the truth. And the rest are just as good. Cream of the Crop is a marvelous collection you’ll want to rush through, but it is best read slowly to better experience its savory taste. Afterall, it took Bill Pronzini parts of seven decades to write these stories and just because they finally arrived in a single package is no reason to gorge yourself, no matter how much you’d like to. Get it. Read it. You’ll like it, I promise.

Go here for the Kindle version and here for the paperback edition at Amazon. Go here to purchase a copy at the Stark House website.