I’ve been a fan of Bill Pronzini’s work since the early 1970s. I’ve read dozens of Pronzini’s books–he is one prolific guy!–and enjoyed them all. I’ve had Small Felonies on my book shelf for over 30 years so I felt it was time I finally got around to reading it. As the title suggests, Small Felonies is a collection of 50 short-short stories.
Bill Pronzini proudly proclaims, “Small Felonies…is the first single-author collection of exclusively short-short–none is longer than two thousand words–and exclusively criminous stories.” (p. x)
Pronzini includes some short-short stories narrated by his most famous character, the “Nameless Detective.” I enjoyed “Something Wrong” when the Nameless Detective senses someone had broken into his apartment…but took nothing. I also liked “The Same Old Grind” where a hoodlum razes an old restaurant owner about his lack of money and discovers the owner has a second source of funding. The final sentence in the story is classic!
I highly recommend Small Felonies! Some of Bill Pronzini’s best work resides between the covers of this book! GRADE: A
Totally agree with this review. Huge fan of Pronzini’s since the ’70s, have read dozen s of his books (including all the Nameless books and stories), and I read and really enjoyed this collection, though it was many years ago. You might also want to check out the more recent noirish collection DAGO RED, which is non-series but does have one Nameless story.
Jeff, I think I have a copy of DAGO RED around here somewhere. I’m amazed Bill Pronzini could maintain high quality over 50 short-shorts! He certainly has a flare for this form of fiction!!
A great choice, not that I have read this one. My husband has all of the Nameless novels by Pronzini and several collections of short stories, including this one. So I will check it out for sure.
Tracy, you and your husband have great tastes in SF and mystery writers! I have the Nameless novels, too, plus many of the other books Bill Pronzini has written. He’s one of my favorite writers!
He’s an excellent writer and an excellent editor (and not too shabby a critic and historian)…I’ve been reading his work almost all my literate life, and don’t intend to stop soon…I think I’ve read at least a few of these as they popped up elsewhere, but haven’t seen this collection before.
Todd, check out my blog on Friday and you’ll see a surprise you’ll be interested in!
Seems a likely date! Interesting that we all (Jeff, you and I) all started reading Pronzini in the early ’70s…I first caught up with him reading old (1960s) back issues of AHMM in the Enfield Public Library.
Todd, Bill Pronzini’s work in the 1970s was seemingly everywhere! And, more impressively, the quality of all those books and short stories continued to improve as the decade went on!!!
Razzes! Can’t argue with your assertation that Pronzini is a fine witer! Nice guy, too!
Bob, I’m glad we’re on the same page with our mutual admiration of Bill Pronzini. I’m very fond of Marcia Muller, too!