Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini: Crucifixion River (USA 2010)

From the Publisher:
The dark clouds are gathering, and it's promising to be a doozy of a storm at the River Bend stage station... where the owners are anxiously awaiting the return of their missing daughter. Where a young cowboy hopes to find safety from the rancher whose wife he's run away with. Where a Pinkerton agent has tracked the quarry he's been chasing for years. Thunder won't be the only thing exploding along CRUCIFIXION RIVER.

Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller are a husband-wife writing team with numerous individual honors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, the Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America, and the American Mystery Award. In addition to the Spur Award-winning title novella, this volume also contains stories featuring Bill Pronzini's famous "Nameless Detective" and Marcia Muller's highly popular Sharon McCone investigator.

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini: Crucifixion River. Leisure Books, ISBN: 9780843963410 (September, 2010), 260 p., $7.99.

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini: Crucifixion River (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
"Crucifixion River" is a short novel that marks the first time Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini have collaborated on a Western story. It is set at a stage station in the river delta area of California, fifty miles inland from San Francisco where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers merge. It is a drama that is finally played out in the ghostly remains of the town once built by the Crucifixion River religious cult that was driven out from the area years before.

John Frederick Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter, the San Francisco operatives of the 1890s detective firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, are also on hand. In "The Carville Ghost," Quincannon investigates the nocturnal appearances of a mysterious apparition. Sabina Carpenter, in her first solo case, investigates a series of pickpocket robberies occurring at crowded amusement parks and market places. Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" even makes an appearance in the story "Wrong Place, Wrong Time," as does Marcia Muller's popular female operative, Sharon McCone. In "Irrefutable Evidence," McCone is challenged by the almost impossible task of exonerating a man imprisoned for the murder of his mistress near a secluded cabin in the mountains in which all the evidence clearly points to his guilt.

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini: Crucifixion River. Western Stories. Five Star, ISBN: 1594145563 (November, 2007), 236 p., $25.95.