Firewind - Softcover

Bill Pronzini is simply one of the masters. He seems to have taken a crack at just about every genre: mysteries, noirish thrillers, historicals, locked-room mysteries, adventure novels, spy capers, men's action, westerns, and, of course, his masterful, long-running Nameless private detective series, now entering its fourth decade, with no signs of creative flagging. He's also ghosted several Brett Halliday short stories as Michael Shayne for Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, and has managed to collaborate with such fellow writers as John Lutz, Barry Wahlberg, Collin Wilcox and Marcia Muller. Still, if he never ventured into fiction writing, his non-fiction work, as both writer and editor, would still earn him a place in the P.I. genre's Hall of Fame. Besides his two tributes to some of the very worst in crime fiction (what he calls "alternative classics"), Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek, and one on western fiction (entitled Six Gun in Cheek, naturally), he's the co-author (with Marcia Muller) of 1001 Midnights. The Mystery Writers of America have nominated him for Edgar Awards several times and his work has been translated into numerous languages and he's published in almost thirty countries. He was the very first president of the Private Eye Writers of America, and he's received three Shamus Awards from them, as well as its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987

Three outlaws arrive in the country town of Big Tree, Calif., on a blazing hot day of a long dry summer, in this well-crafted western by veteran Pronzini ( The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran ). A huge shipment of munitions is a-sittin' in Big Tree just a-waitin' to be stole--and they're a-goin' to do it. But the burglary gets bungled, an explosion sets the town on fire and there is only one way out of the parched valley for the townsfolk--by train. That way lies peril, however, for not only is the only locomotive in some disrepair, but the munitions are on board, and the fire is spreading fast--as fast as the train is racing. Pronzini, a pulp aficionado, adds to the race-against-time tension of his homespun stage with sideline subplots: a guilt-ridden love-triangle, an outlaw's hysterical memories of his father's death in a fire, a one-legged man's bitterness and misguided heroism--building to an acceptable, if rather bland, ending. While not attempting to transcend the genre, the author has added to it with his usual professionalism.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.