Boobytrap

Emotionally exhausted from the events surrounding his partner’s suicide, “Nameless” welcomes the chance for a quiet vacation that comes when San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Patrick Dixon proposes that the burnt-out detective drive Dixon’s wife and son to their summer cottage on a remote High Sierra lake. In exchange, “Nameless” will have a week’s free use of a neighboring cabin.

The same week, unknown to both the assistant DA. and “Nameless,” also among the vacationers at Deep Mountain Lake is a recently paroled explosives expert, Donald Michael Latimer. The timing is not coincidental, for Latimer has meticulously devised a warped plan for revenge against the men who sent him to prison. His viciously ingenious boobytraps have already claimed the lives of two of his intended victims, and at Deep Mountain Lake he has lined up his next three targets: Pat Dixon, Dixon’s twelve-year-old son, and “Nameless” himself.

A harrowing tale that builds with relentless suspense to an edge-of-the-chair climax, marks another triumph both for the sleuth cited by the as “the thinking man’s detective” and for his creator, Bill Pronzini, whom the praised as “an exceptionally skilled writer working at the top of his ability.”