Graveyard Plots: The Best Short Stories of Bill Pronzini

For this collection, Pronzini, the prolific, award-winning West Coast mystery writer, has gathered 23 of his stories, all of which display his versatility, his clean, crisp narrative style, and his keen awareness of detail. These talesincluding three that feature his well-known series chararacter, the ""Nameless Detective''run the gamut from psychological suspense (``Strangers in the Fog'') to satire (``A Craving for Originality'') to Western gothic (``The Hanging Man'' and ``His Name was Legion''). Of special note, ``Proof of Guilt'' is a dandy murder-in-a-locked-room puzzle; ``Multiples'' (written with Barry N. Malzberg) is an intriguing literary exercise about a man who can't decide whether to kill his wife or simply write about it; ``Rebound'' is a solid character piece about a washed-up reporter stalking a once-great basketball player; and ``Peekaboo,'' about the lone tenant in a large, eerie house, has an ending that will make readers jump. November 26