The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales

Introduction by Ed Gorman Bill Pronzini: Toiling in the Fields of the Lord

When the writer F. Paul Wilson noted several years ago that private eye novels are snapshots of a certain era, I wondered immediately if he had Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series in mind.

Unlike any other body of work in the genre, Nameless is a history of San Francisco and its environs over a period of five decades; a history of American culture from the time of the hippies through the new century when peace and love, brother, are not only forgotten but downright anathema to a country becoming more and more right-wing; and a fictional autobiography, if you will, of a detective who is very much like his creator. In fact, when Bill finally gave him a name, no one was surprised when it turned out to be “Bill.”

I began this introduction by alluding to the Nameless novels because they are not only the dominant part of Bill’s worldwide reputation, they also have a lot in common with the most neglected part of his work — his brilliant, urgent stand-alones. And the stand-alones have even more in common with Bill’s short stories.

Certainly there are times in the Nameless books when the mood of the detective fits the description above, but it is in such stand-alones as Blue Lonesome, A Wasteland of Strangers and The Crimes of Jordan Wise that Bill’s work begins to resonate with the same sense of doom as John Steinbeck’s, one of Bill’s favorite writers.

Three of the stories here have historical settings — “McIntosh’s Chute,” “The Hanging Man” and “Hooch.” The first two also show a particular kinship with Steinbeck’s work.

Bill’s early years were not unlike Steinbeck’s, young working-class man taking whatever jobs he could find while he wrote on the side:

“I haven’t held any other jobs since 1969. Before that: plumbing supply salesman, warehouseman, office typist, car-park attendant, part-time civilian guard for a U.S. marshal transporting federal prisoners from one lockup to another by car (sounds a lot more exciting than it was; mostly just boring road trips. But I did get one short story out of the experience).”

And so we come to the stories in this collection.

“What Happened to Mary?”

60 Minutes once ran a story about a town bully who became so much of a threat to everybody — including law enforcement — that he was mysteriously murdered. To say that the investigation into his death was sluggish and aimless would be to understate the matter. Bill has set many of his stories and not a few of his novels in small towns. He understands their rhythms and their rituals because he was born and raised in one.

Bill imparts a mythic quality to such places. You can imagine this story of a bully’s fate being passed down from generation to generation. While there are some mystery writers who long for literary acceptance, I think Bill’s best work has the kind of resonance and simple truth-telling that deserves it. And he achieves it without pretension.

Here the town is perfectly imagined and peopled. For all its external modernity, Ridgedale might well fit into an old Twilight Zone episode because in many respects it is no different than it was seventy or eighty years ago.

Few writers were as sensitive to nature as Steinbeck. You’ll find the same feelings in Bill’s work. Ridgedale “is all pine-covered hills, rolling meadows and streams full of fat trout.” It is untouched by condo builders and other developers. It has no McDonald’s.

All these facts contribute to the mythic quality I mentioned. A tale the town will never forget and neither will you.

“Toiling in the Fields of the Lord”

Forget Freddy Krueger, clever a concept as he is; forget the “Saw” movies, ugly as they are.

“Toiling” is a horror story of such finesse and strangeness that by its end it is as much a tone poem as a mordant depiction of madness. The specificity of the details remind me once again of Bill’s Steinbeckian connection with nature. Not only that, but the detail of the lifestyle itself, the migrant worker experience encapsulated with such precision and resonance.

No matter where you think this story is going, you’ll be wrong. This is the storyteller at his shrewd best. The finale bears on a profound aberration that speaks to true moral devastation.

This should have been nominated for both the Edgar and Bram Stoker awards.

“The Cemetery Man”

The title story, with the heft and ambience of a true crime story.

The concept is breathtaking and the voice and pace of the events are perfect.

Once again, a small town. Once again a sturdy, reliable small-town narrator.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a graveyard put to better use as a device for a story. Nor have I seen better use of an odd old man that children might be warned against but that adults might find interesting — as here.

This has the kind of dramatic arc that would have made it perfect — again — for The Twilight Zone. Or maybe the old thirty-minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Because this has parallels of a sort in the true-crime field, the ending here is particularly chilling.

“Breakbone”

I can’t decide if this would have been more at home in the old Manhunt magazine of the fifties or maybe as a storyline for the grimmest issue ever published of the often-banned EC Crime Comics.

Whew. This is one kick-ass story and the one-hundred-percent stuff of pure contaminated nightmare.

Bill at his cagiest.

I’m not sure that I would strike up a conversation with a man “close to seven feet tall” who looked kind of wasted and “forlorn, like a kid nobody wanted to have anything to do with.” But our narrator does because he’s not only the friendly type, he’s also charitable.

This one I can see as one of the radio shows I grew up listening to after the big war. Good actors, fine writing and absolutely spellbinding storytelling.

“Out of the Depths”

One of the most fascinating women I’ve ever encountered in crime fiction. And some of the finest dialogue Bill has ever written.

In what could have been a predictable take on traditional noir themes Bill, through the character of Shea, creates a classic story of isolation and terror.

The same can be said for Tanner, the epitome of the macho adventurer, who invites himself into her house in a Caribbean setting similar to the one in The Crimes of Jordan Wise. He is real and yet at times almost surreal. “He came tumbling out of the sea, dark and misshapen like a being that was not human. A creature from the depths...” These images open the story.

Shea must see him not only as a threat to her life but a sexual threat as well, for the subtext to this story is that of a frightened and betrayed woman who ultimately is as afraid of herself as much as she is of others.

Bill is a fine horror writer and a good deal of his crime work is tinged with horrific effects. As I said, the dialogue here is among the finest Bill has ever created. As ominous and omnipresent as Tanner is, the story is Shea’s, whose words, collectively, are a bitter confession of her entangled and failed life.

Will she be raped? Will she be murdered?

Does she even care?

A true masterpiece.

“Lines”

I don’t want to talk about this story in much detail because it is a dark and jarring journey you should take without any preparation. Let me just say that it breaks several forms and tropes in the telling and becomes by the end a kind of Dali-esque nightmare. Writers who pride themselves on being cutting-edge should study this to learn how to take a familiar situation and turn it into a true masterwork.

“Caius”

Barry Malzberg is one of the most important science fiction writers of my generation. He came into the field with serious intentions and turned those intentions into novels (and stories) as timeless as Guernica Night and Herovit’s World. Writers as important as the late Theodore Sturgeon considered him a major and lasting voice. His The Engines of the Night is a seminal collection of essays about the field.

Together Bill and Barry have produced four novels and numerous short stories in both science fiction and crime. I’ve always felt that their serial killer novel (written long before serial killers became a popular theme), The Running of Beasts, belongs on the same shelf as Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs.

I think this story speaks to a basic human need. “Why are we born to suffer and die?” is the question uppermost in the minds of all generations of Homo sapiens and doubtless the species that preceded us as well.

We’ve always responded to this question by searching for oracles. Think of the Egyptians. Think of the Mayans. Think of the American Indians. And yes, think even of the TV ministers shucking their believers out of money week in and week out. All of us, even atheists, look for oracles of one kind or another.

Bill and Barry have created the great paradox here — the oracle who is himself in need of an oracle. They touch on one man confronting in his loneliness and grief the universe his callers ask him to explain. But of course he can’t.

Quick takes on a few of the other stories:

“Confession” — A twist on James M. Cain theme, except it all goes badly in a more ironic way than even Cain imagined.

“Hooch” — Wry story about young bootlegger whose ambition to be a better writer than Dashiell Hammett gets him in trouble with his deadly companions.

“Boobytrap” — A true tour de force involving explosives both human and manufactured. Notably excellent plotting and some of the most finely drawn characters Bill has ever given us. This was the basis (though much changed) for the powerful Nameless novel of the same title.

“Angelique” — A horror story that Bill makes real through the voice of his narrator, who may or may not be mad, depending on the reader’s belief in the supernatural.

“The Storm Tunnel” — A very creepy take on childhood and going places your mom wouldn’t approve of.

“Putting the Pieces Back” — A tale that includes two of the cleverest twists Bill has ever come up with.

“Man Cave” — This has the feel of one of those true-crime shows on TV. A broken marriage so well fleshed out here it has the sorrowful bitter air of real life.

Reading these stories two or three times while preparing for this introduction I realized one important fact about Bill Pronzini’s work. That much of it, especially in the short stories and stand-alones, is ripe with a sense of Poe-esque dread.

The Steinbeck influence, as I mentioned in the preceding pages, is what grounds the stories in everyday reality. Bill is a sharp observer both of human behavior and nature. But what animates many of his characters is dread. As is the case in Poe’s best stories. Sometimes the protagonist is afraid of the person he seeks; sometimes the protagonist is afraid of himself.

In one of his two or three most important novels, A Wasteland of Strangers, virtually everybody in the book lives in dread of someone or something. They truly toil in the fields of the Lord.