The Bughouse Affair

Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller

Summary

First in a series of lighthearted historical mysteries set in 1890s San Francisco featuring a former Pinkerton operative and an ex-Secret Service agent.

Private detectives Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon undertake what initially appear to be two unrelated investigations. Sabina’s case involves the hunt for a ruthless lady “dip” who uses fiendish means to relieve her victims of their valuables at Chutes Amusement Park and other crowded places. Quincannon, meanwhile, is after a slippery housebreaker who targets the homes of wealthy residents, following a trail that leads him from the infamous Barbary Coast to an oyster pirate’s lair to a Tenderloin parlor house known as the Fiddle Dee Dee.

The two cases eventually connect in surprising fashion, but not before two murders and assorted other felonies complicate matters even further. And not before the two sleuths are hindered, assisted, and exasperated by the bughouse Sherlock Holmes.

Fans of Marcia Muller’s bestselling Sharon McCone novels and Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series will applaud this and future exploits from the annals of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

“Those who enjoy historical mysteries are in for a particular treat with this delightful story featuring two intrepid detectives who solve their cases using different but equally effective methods.” —Booklist

“The easy and amusing read flows beautifully . . . A treat for Rhys Bowen and Laurie R. King readers.” —Library Journal

“Fans of Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range historicals will welcome this Carpenter and Quincannon novel . . . A doubly impossible crime only adds to the enjoyable plot.” —Publishers Weekly

Available since: 01/08/2013.

Print length: 272 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Logic - A Novel

Olympia Vernon

A “profoundly raw and gripping” novel of a girl’s life of hardship in rural Mississippi (The Baltmore Sun). 
 
 
As a child, Logic Harris survived a fall from a tree—an accident that precipitated her transformation into a young girl lost in her own world. Logic's mother has secretly wished that Logic had not survived, and she now ignores the increasingly apparent evidence of the aberrant attention Logic's father bestows upon his daughter in her adolescence.  
 
As her mother retreats into her work as a neighborhood midwife and Logic's father collapses into paranoia, Logic is left to navigate alone what she scarcely understands. In inspired prose, stunning in its imaginative authority, Logic is a chilling allegory about the dangers of silence and a searing portrait of a girl lost in shame and fear, and a family and community too scarred by their own wounds to save her. 
 
“Steeped in religious, surreal imagery and references to ordering principles—atoms, alphabets, life's basic materials—Vernon’s abstract language asks precise questions about the chances for survival in a lawless world.”—Booklist

Show book

Abbeychurch; Or Self-Control and...

Charlotte M. Yonge

Charlotte M. Yonge was one of the most prodigious novelists of the 19th century, and though many of her books have long since gone out of print, some of her works are still read around the world today, including The Heir of Redclyffe, Heartsease and The Daisy Chain.

Show book