After a 15-year hiatus, Trevanian returned with a Western novel called "Incident at Twenty-Mile" (1998), and then a collection of short stories, "Hot Night in the City" (2000). His last published novel, written while he was in declining health, was "The Crazyladies of Pearl Street" (2005), an autobiographical coming-of-age story of a boy surviving with his mother and sister in the slums of Albany, New York, in the years preceding and during World War II. In November 2005, it was selected as one of 11 Editors' Choice books by the Historical Novel Society.