Gone, No Forwarding by Joe Gores

Published by Random House in 1978

It's a shame that Joe Gores' novels about the Dan Kearney Agency -- known collectively as the "DKA Files" -- are no longer in print. Gores packed more story and characterization into his two hundred page novels than most writers can manage with a five hundred page blockbuster. It's also a shame that Gores died this year, taking with him the funny, grouchy, sly, opinionated, and utterly convincing characters who repossessed cars, solved mysteries, and muddled through life while working for DKA.

Gone, No Forwarding is the third novel in the series. It has all the plot twists a reader of the first two will have come to expect. This one has less to do with repossessing cars than with Kearney's license to practice his craft. Someone has complained that Kearney's staff failed to honor an agreement to hold a payment in trust pending a judicial determination of the lender's entitlement to it. The employee who supposedly breached the agreement died an unexpected but natural death, leaving Kearney scrambling for a witness who can contradict the story told by the person who made the payment. Kearney dispatches his top employees (with whom readers of the first two novels will be familiar) to find people who may have been working in the office when the payment was made. Those folks have since moved on to other jobs (one is a hooker) and other locations, making the task of finding them a challenge.

While there is a modest amount of violence in Gone, No Forwarding, the emphasis is on the process of detection rather than shootouts and thrills. The characters, as usual, are trying to balance their personal problems with the demands that Kearney makes upon them. The nefarious motive that underlies the threat to Kearney's license relates back to an event that occurred in an earlier novel, but it isn't necessary to read the earlier one to understand this one. As the DKA employees track down witnesses and piece together facts, the mystery is resolved in a way that is both surprising and satisfying. But as much fun as the plot and characters provide, the great joy of a DKA novel is Gores' tight prose, his ability to set a scene, to capture a personality, to create atmosphere, in just a few carefully chosen words. Gone, No Forwarding isn't the best novel in the series, but like the others, it is a joy to read.

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Final Notice by Joe Gores

Published by Random House in 1973

Reading a DKA novel is like spending a few days shadowing a repo man to learn the ropes of the repossession business, except that it's more fun (and less dangerous). In a DKA novel, you know that you'll meet interesting characters, encounter plenty of action, and exercise your brain as you try to solve whatever puzzle Joe Gores has in store for you.

Final Notice takes place six months after Dead Skip. In that novel, Bart Heslip was hospitalized after being hit with a sap outside the DKA offices. Final Notice gets off to a similar start as Ed Dorsey is hospitalized after being beaten by two thugs outside the DKA offices. The beating seems to be tied to the repossession of a Cadillac belonging to an aging beauty named Chandra, whose delinquent payments are suddenly and mysteriously made good. Thanks to Heslip's intervention, one of the thugs who beat Dorsey is captured and identified as a mob henchman. DKA's founder, Dan Kearny, makes it his business to find out why Dorsey was beaten, and solves a couple of murders along the way.

The plot of Final Notice isn't quite as ingenious as that of Dead Skip, but it ties together nicely at the end. The pace is swift and the process of detection is fascinating. Characters come to life, particularly Giselle, a DKA employee whose ill-advised affair with a banker is a central focus of the story. Gores' prose is tight and suitably hard-boiled without becoming a parody. It's unfortunate this novel is out of print. Seek it out if you like first rate detective fiction.

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Dead Skip by Joe Gores

First published in 1972

Barton Heslip has had a good day, repossessing three cars for his employer, DKA. Back at the office, he calls his friend and co-worker Larry Ballard, then steps outside to collect some paperwork from his car. Someone emerges from the shadows and hits him with a sap. Now Heslip is in a coma, having been pulled from a car that went over a cliff, and Dan Kearny, founder of DKA, has given Ballard 72 hours to find the man who tried to kill Heslip. As time begins to run out, Kearny joins the hunt.

Dead Skip is a fast-paced, carefully plotted detective story. Joe Gores has a sharp eye for the people who walk San Francisco's streets and a finely tuned ear for dialog. He writes with an economical style, providing just enough detail to give personality to his characters and authenticity to his settings. The mystery of Heslip's assailant isn't easy to guess but the resolution is credible. The process of detection, as practiced by Ballard and then by Kearny, is fascinating. Each comes to the same conclusion by independent means, a plot device that makes the story even more interesting.

It's a shame Dead Skip isn't still in print. It deserves the status of a genre classic.

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