WILLIAM J. REYNOLDS “The Lost Boys.” PI Nebraska (*). First published in The Mysterious West, edited by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins, 1994). Reprinted in The Fifth Grave (Great American Murder Mysteries), edited by Martin Greenberg and Billie Sue Mosiman (Rutledge Hill, paperback, 1998).

   The asterisk in the first line above is there because the name of the PI in this case of two missing boys is never revealed. But he’s based in Omaha, and so is the PI in Reynolds’ six novels and two or three other short stories. It’s been a while since I read any of the novels (over 30 years), so I don’t remember if withholding the leading character’s name was a feature of those or not.

   The mother of the missing boys is our man’s client. She is divorced from their father, a big man back in Monument, South Dakota, and she is sure that he is the one who has taken them. The only industry in Monument is that of extracting granite from a local quarry, and our hero is forced to make his inquiries of the local townspeople under a huge handicap: he does not want to make the reason why he’s asking questions known.

   If I were to make any kind of criticism as to how Nebraska (I’ve gone ahead and said it) handles his investigation, I’d be guilty of Monday morning quaterbacking, as the story’s a good one, strongly told. What I enjoyed even more than the case itself, though, was the descriptive way Reynolds brings to life a one horse town in the middle of nowhere, and a very isolated nowhere to boot.

        The Nebraska novels —

The Nebraska Quotient (1984)
Moving Targets (1986)
Money Trouble (1988)
Things Invisible (1989)
The Naked Eye (1991)
Drive-By (1995)