Bindlestiff & Quicksilver, by Bill Pronzini

I finished another couple of Nameless Detective novels this weekend, Bindlestiff and Quicksilver. We're into the early '80s now, and it's interesting to see how Pronzini's view of San Francisco culture is slowly changing. Before, things had been pretty homogeneous, but now we've had one story centered around Chinatown (Dragonfire) and one centered around Japantown (Quicksilver).

These books continue the move back away from the stupid locked room mysteries that Pronzini was obsessed with for the course of a couple of books, which is all for the series' better.

I'm a little less pleased by Nameless' changing interaction with the police--though it's by no means a deal-breaker like the locked-room obsession was. I wrote earlier that I really liked how Nameless interacted with the police department: keeping them informed of things when he should and not sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.

In the last several books, that's totally evaporated. He increasingly dives into situations that he knows he shouldn't be involved in, and just pays faint lip service to his old ideals, noting that he shouldn't be doing what he's doing (as he does). Now, mind you, this is how many fictional detectives operate, such as Spenser, who I quite enjoy. It was just nice to see Nameless act differently.

In any case, having read a total of three Nameless books over the last week, I'm liable to put them aside for a while.

Wallace-a-thon: Steel Driver

I played the other new Martin Wallace game yesterday, which was Steel Driver. As I wrote previously, it's his newest iteration of the Prairie Railways system, and the only one that's been professionally produced (as opposed to the quasi-profession Winsome Game productions).

As with the other games in the series, it's a game of stock purchase and rail improvement. No one owns any individual railway line, but you're instead auctioning off who gets to buy the stock for each railway each turn. The most unique feature is probably the fact that the purchase price of the stock is what's then used to build the railway--which both provides for some interesting game tactics and also feels realistic.

I liked the main gameplay quite a lot, as we fought over the railways and then built them out, sometimes blocking other lines. Turn order is controlled by a "pass" mechanic which adds yet another decision point to the game.

I'm unconvinced if I like the end game, where you determine the final value of all the stock by picking up cubes off the board, because it's very chaotic. You can lock in some cubes, but after that it's all about order. I'll need another play to see what I think there.

In any case, it's another fairly heavy economic game from Wallace, but a relatively short one at 60-90 minutes. There was some disagreement about whether the optimal player number was 5 or 6. There's also some opportunity for AP. I thought the decisions were pretty easy, but we had one player who really dragged them out.

As with After the Flood, I want one more play before I write my full review.