John Quincannon Analysis

John Quincannon is the lead protagonist of the John Quincannon series of detective thrillers by Bill Pronzini. The first novel of the series was Quincannon that introduced former United States Secret Service agent John Frederick Quincannon and his partner Sabina Carpenter that team up to start an investigations business. Pronzini the author was born in California in 1943 and showed early predilection to reading. Some of his favorite novels were the mystery digests and science fiction books that belonged to his grandfather and the pulp magazines to be found in second hand bookstore when he was twelve. Like Nameless his most popular character, Pronzini has a huge collection of digest and pulp magazines that contains nearly 3000 titles. He would

John Frederick Quincannon a former intelligence officer with the US Secret Service comes together with one of the pioneer Pinkerton operatives Sabina Carpenter to form one of the best investigations firms in San Francisco. As one of the top agencies on the West Coast, their cases often has them traversing most of the Western seaboard throughout the late 19th century. Quincannon typically employs a Sherlock Holmes like wit to solve a series of locked room type murders, burglaries, and robberies. The second novel of the series opens to John getting a brief to track down some valuable artifacts that had been stolen during the 1846 Bear Flag Rebellion of California. The only clue in the case was an antique chest that had been found on sale in a pawn shop. John Quincannon is called in to investigate and trail the thieves of the valuable artifacts. The only thing he has to go on is an old report found hidden in one of the secret compartment s inside the Mexican wedding chest. In the search for these valuable artifacts John finds that he is dealing with a ruthless gang that would not hesitate to maim or even kill to keep their ill-gotten