Double by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

I've often wondered how two people write a book. I remember reading how a pair of fantasy writers, each well-known, although I can't remember either of their names at the moment, sent drafts back and forth and revised and rewrote independently on the same text. There were the banking mysteries by Emma Lathen, who was actually two women, but the stories were seamless. I tried it one summer a number of years ago with a classmate, and it was a nightmare.

This is something I had never quite imagined. Muller and Pronzini actually wrote this story in parallel. Muller writes in first person as Sharon McCone and Pronzini writes in first person as Wolf. They take turns religiously, and actually start out investigating quite different crimes. They are both off their home turf of San Francisco in San Diego for a PI convention. The first two "chapters" actually cover exactly the same time frame - Sharon's and Wolf's arrival at the convention and their initial foray into the convention mix - including their encounter and conversation with each other, repeated verbatim in both segments.

To my amazement, it actually works. I'm not sure it is a format that I would enjoy reading for an entire series, but it was entertaining for this one.

I may have to read some of Pronzini's stuff. He uses an odd little gimmick - the nameless detective. We readers do not get to know Wolf's name. He discusses the nickname "Wolf"; it annoys him, but he accepts it from McCone and shares it with a small boy that he encounters. His name isn't a secret. He tells it to people when asked. It is on his convention badge, which he puts in his pocket. But the reader is never made privy to this bit of information. In fact, he does it so casually that I might not have noticed that if I hadn't read the write-up on Amazon before I bought it.

Sharon also runs into Kinsey Milhone at the convention. There may be others that I simply didn't recognize. Reminds me of Asimov's murder mystery about a convention which included writers and booksellers. He dropped the names of any number of actual writers, including himself, but I'm not sure he included any characters from other writers' work.