BILL PRONZINI – Blowback. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints: Dale Books, 1978; Foul Play Press, 1984.

   As you may already know, this is the one that begins with the nameless private detective as he waits for the report on his lungs to come through. It is a tumor, he knows that now, but is it malignant?

   He means to sweat it out alone over the weekend, but a call for help from a friend takes him a short way out of himself, up into the mountains, to mix a little fishing with business.

   There are six men at the camp, and one woman, which is just the right mixture to provoke a murderous amount of jealousy and hatred, but how do a stolen Oriental carpet and a lone peacock feather enter in to it?

   Pronzini enjoys doing a tough-edged version of classical detection, and he may surprise a few who haven’t been paying close attention; but he adds something more — a rare view of someone confronted with and facing his own mortality, analyzing his life, comparing it with those of the pulp heroes he emulates.

   The fact that he, and others, still read their adventures makes certain their kind of immortality, and while I can’t tell you what the doctor’s report says, even without a name to call his own, there is a private eye who now can be added to the list of those who may in time be forgotten by many — by not by all.