Here's a fine modern mystery that would have made a wonderful 1950s B movie. Robert Mitchum would have been perfect as the hulking stranger John Faith, who arrives one day in the faded Northern California resort town of Pomo with a mysterious agenda. Who but Paul Douglas could have played the tough but fair-minded police chief? And the part of Storm Carey, the gorgeous widow feeding her grief with rampant sex, would have been a natural for Jan Sterling or Elisabeth Scott. Bill Pronzini both uses and overcomes these film noir images as he skips from voice to voice to tell a tricky, compelling story. Other books by this excellent writer include Blue Lonesome and--from his Nameless Detective series--Hardcase.


From Booklist
Beneath the surface in the northern California resort community of Pomo swirls a viper's nest of desire, jealousy, loneliness, and crime. When a sexual assault occurs, the obvious suspect is an outsider, John Faith; after all, the sheriff doesn't like Faith's interest in a sexy local widow he fancies himself. Neither does a boozy reporter, who launches a yellow-journalism campaign against the outsider. When the widow is murdered, the town explodes. Pronzini, the author of the extraordinary "Nameless" detective series (see starred review, p.1667), rotates the first-person narrative among the main characters as if they were sitting around a campfire and picking up the story where the previous teller left off. It's a difficult technique to execute successfully, but Pronzini pulls it off by providing each narrator with a unique voice and personal context. The result, as in Stephen Dobyns' Church of Dead Girls , is a thriller in which a small town's fear of the unknown drives the action. Highly recommended. Wes Lukowsky


From Kirkus Reviews
The latest product of Pronzini's recent fascination with the bad chemistry between tight little towns and catalytic strangers (Blue Lonesome, 1995; Sentinels, 1996) brings big, ugly wanderer John C. Faith to Pomo, a lakeside hamlet in Pronzini's favorite northern California wilds. Faith's picked a bad weekend to come to Pomo, since bank president George Petrie, desperate to cover his minor defalcations, is about to pull off a major robbery of his own bank; Indian teacher Audrey Sixkiller is getting threatened by a masked rapist; and aptly named widow Storm Carey, who's slept with half the men in town, keeps her very last assignation while Faith, who absently deflected her first come-on between bites of his restaurant meal, is on his way to her place. Faith manages to get away from police chief Richard Novak, but Novak, still burning from the memory of Storm's fiery embraces, isn't about to take Faith's escape lying down. And the outcast women who somehow know they can trust Faith--an unhappily pregnant teen, a waitress who gave up nursing school to marry the brute who beats her, and even, in the end, Audrey Sixkiller herself--only seem to be making more trouble for themselves. Pronzini nails his familiar small-town meanies--the bigots, the cheats, the tiny-souled righteous--with an unerring eye. Only the alcoholic newspaperman who talks to his gun, and maybe the enigmatic Faith himself, miss the bull's-eye. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Once again (as with his acclaimed BLUE LONESOME) veteran mystery novelist Pronzini departs from his Nameless private eye series for an offbeat tale of crime and punishment. Here he presents his story via first-person reports from an assortment of folks whose lives are touched by the arrival of mystery man John Faith into their small, secluded northern California town. It's not an easy task for a writer to control so many narrators, but Pronzini does it with seeming effortlessness, while at the same time neatly melding two subgenres -- the thriller and the whodunit.

—Dick Lochte

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set in an isolated town in Northern California, A Wasteland of Strangers begins with the arrival of John Faith in Pomo. Who is he? Why has he come here now, during the off-season when there is nothing to do but get into trouble? What is it he wants? His arrival is surrounded by questions; his staying clothed in threats; his leaving fondly desired by almost all who cross paths with him. Everyone has an opinion of him; only a few of them are favorable. For everyone he helps, there are two who question his motives, who see danger to themselves and their way of life in his continued presence in their town. And then, when a beautiful, lonely woman is brutally slaughtered after spending some time with him, Faith is the prime and logical suspect. Discovering the identity of the killer becomes as important to Faith as it is to anyone else...except the murderer.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

While some readers may resist the ending, Pronzini (the Nameless Detective series; Blue Lonesome, etc.) plays fair and spins a nifty page-turner. Fast-shifting first-person narratives from various characters (a lovelorn police chief, a spouse-battered waitress, an alcoholic newspaper editor and others, all speaking in instantly identifiable voices) build this tale of small-town meanness and its lethal consequences. Big, ugly John Faith arrives in Northern California's Pomo. Locals are disturbed by his scars, his battered Porsche and by his brooding insistence on privacy. An inflammatory editorial, written drunk, in the weekly newspaper sets almost everyone in town against Faith. The police chief sees Faith apparently running away from the bludgeoned body of Storm Carey, rich widow and practicing nymphomaniac, and tries unsuccessfully to arrest him. Shot and wounded by the chief, Faith flees into the forest, heading for the lake. During the ensuing manhunt the fugitive is aided and abetted by an unlikely trio of women. The story fairly tears along to the jolting climax. Even after everyone has his or her say in the epilogue, readers still don't know John Faith's secrets. But that mystery is more haunting than maddening. Pronzini's newest story is a gem. (July)

VOYA - Florence H. Munat

A stranger has arrived in Pomo, a remote town in northern California. The ominous-looking, scar-faced John Faith is immediately perceived as a threat and a troublemaker. And indeed, trouble does seem to follow the peripatetic Faith. In Pomo, suspicious townspeople assume he is responsible for recent minor crimes; later, these same people are quickly convinced that it was Faith who murdered the beautiful, promiscuous widow Storm Carey. When Sheriff Richard Novak tries to arrest him, Faith flees and is badly wounded by a bullet from Novak's gun. This adult mystery is tightly structured into four parts, each describing a single day's action. The points-of-view shift among seventeen townspeople who include a hateful lake resort owner, a xenophobic born-again housewife, an alcoholic reporter, a banker fleeing Pomo with embezzled funds, and Sheriff Novak. All the men were in love with Storm. Three women narrators who join forces to prevent Faith's capture are a waitress who is abused by her husband, a native American high school teacher, and the teacher's teenage student, who has just learned she is pregnant by her immature boyfriend. We never hear John Faith's point of view; the townspeople tell his story. The short chunks of narration keep the book moving swiftly. Tension builds, and the climax and denouement are surprising and credible. The different narrative voices take on individuality. If some of the characterizations seem trite... well, in mystery, plot's the thing and this is a good one. VOYA Codes: 3Q 3P S (Readable without serious defects, Will appeal with pushing, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

Kirkus Reviews

The latest product of Pronzini's recent fascination with the bad chemistry between tight little towns and catalytic strangers (Blue Lonesome, 1995; Sentinels, 1996) brings big, ugly wanderer John C. Faith to Pomo, a lakeside hamlet in Pronzini's favorite northern California wilds. Faith's picked a bad weekend to come to Pomo, since bank president George Petrie, desperate to cover his minor defalcations, is about to pull off a major robbery of his own bank; Indian teacher Audrey Sixkiller is getting threatened by a masked rapist; and aptly named widow Storm Carey, who's slept with half the men in town, keeps her very last assignation while Faith, who absently deflected her first come-on between bites of his restaurant meal, is on his way to her place. Faith manages to get away from police chief Richard Novak, but Novak, still burning from the memory of Storm's fiery embraces, isn't about to take Faith's escape lying down. And the outcast women who somehow know they can trust Faith—an unhappily pregnant teen, a waitress who gave up nursing school to marry the brute who beats her, and even, in the end, Audrey Sixkiller herself—only seem to be making more trouble for themselves.

Pronzini nails his familiar small-town meanies—the bigots, the cheats, the tiny-souled righteous—with an unerring eye. Only the alcoholic newspaperman who talks to his gun, and maybe the enigmatic Faith himself, miss the bull's-eye.