"Nameless" had seen enough death in his years; spending his time watching someone drive to several funerals a day, funerals for people he didn't know, was more than he could take. And, he had a non-professional problem of his own: his relationship with his wife, Kerry, had hit a wall and nothing he did got him over it and to the other side. There was one possibility, one thing he'd done (or not done), but knowing that didn't seem to help... Also...

The police said it was an accident, the dead woman's sister said it was murder... and that she knew who did it. Nameless isn't certain, but the more he learns about Nancy Mathias's life, the more inclined he is to accept the likelihood of murder-especially as the players still alive become more and more distasteful. Combine that with the situation Jake Runyon, one of the agency's partners, is facing as he searches for a young man who is either a murderer...

Shaken after a hair's-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he's not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco's shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but Pronzini, working at the top of his form, takes his seasoned private-eye hero to a new phase of a still-evolving...

So what if Nameless can't get his girlfriend, Kerry, to marry him? So what if he can't talk his partner, Eberhardt, out of his bitter funk? Skies are sunny, and the Nameless Detective wants them to stay that way. So he decides to do an old man a favor and find his missing granddaughter, Gianna. But no one said it would be easy. It seems Gianna's roommate is turning tricks, and Nameless' search quickly leads him to a pimp, a murder, and into a dark...

Nameless may not like David Virden, but the case is simple enough: find his ex-wife, and they know where she is. Deliver some papers to her and it is is all done. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and slams the door. His colleague, Tamara, tells Nameless that Virden threatens to sue, stops payment on his checks, and claims that the woman they located is not his wife. Then he disappears and his fiancee...

Nameless and Lieutenant Frank Hastings combine their investigations of a harrowing case of murder and bizarre conspiracy surrounding an old California wine-making family.