Compared to on-off keying (OOK), M-ary pulse amplitude modulation (M-PAM, M>2) is more spectrally efficient. However, to detect M-PAM signals reliably, the requirement of accurate channel state information is more stringent. Previously, for OOK systems, we have developed a receiver that requires few pilot symbols and can jointly detect the data sequence and estimate the unknown channel gain implicitly. In this paper, using the same approach, we extend our previous work and derive a generalized receiver for M-PAM systems. A Viterbi-type trellis-search algorithm coupled with a selective-store strategy is adopted, resulting in a low implementation complexity and a low memory requirement. Therefore, the receiver is efficient in terms of energy, spectra, implementation complexity and memory. Using theoretical analysis, we show that its error performance approaches that of maximum likelihood detection with perfect knowledge of the channel gain, as the observation window length increases. Also, simulation results are presented to justify the theoretical analysis.