Joe Gores Mystery Collection

Joe Gores Books

Cons, Scams & Grifts by Joe Gores

If anyone knows how to keep a carousel of a plot going--with multiple entrances and exits and any number of brass rings looking like the real thing--it's Joe Gores. His "DKA files" books--DKA standing for Dan Kearny Associates, a motley crew of accomplished San Francisco repo men--provide the kind of plot where the reader must trust the author and settle back for the wild (and wonderful) ride.
In this new novel, the men and women of DKA meet up once again with members of the Muchwaya family of Gypsies. The two groups form a useful, if uneasy, alliance. Dan, in fact, agrees to be hired by Staley, a Muchwaya elder he likes despite considering him "the twistiest man he had ever known." What Staley wants is for Dan to bring to earth the elusive and extremely gorgeous Yana, apparently now on the lam after murdering her husband. Yana is as clever as she is beautiful, and her wily disguises keep her--barely--one step ahead of Kearney.

Cons, Scams & Grifts lives up to its title, with the usual Gores gusto keeping the action fast, furious, and funny. I'm not going to tell you about the talking orangutan, or the phony baron, or the lesbian dominatrix, or the mortuary cosmetician known as Becky Thatcher, or what part the Pope plays, or how the Japanese mob got involved. Just trust me--it all makes sense in the end. And you're going to love it.

Cases by Joe Gores

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Joe Gores, who has won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award three times in his long career, says about his latest book, "In Cases I have tried to mix fact and fiction so thoroughly that nobody--not even myself--can now untangle them." No wonder this wide-ranging saga of a young man's entry into the life of a San Francisco private detective has a fragmented, often familiar feel to it. Bits of real life and enhanced memory seem to have become mixed up with the many films noir that Pierce Duncan enjoys on his journey from Notre Dame to Baghdad by the Bay.
There's the Georgia chain-gang movie, where convicts murder a cruel guard; the Las Vegas crime-and-boxing movie, where an honest pug dies rather than throwing a fight; the Los Angeles religious cult movie, where a young man finds love among the loonies. And finally, there's the movie that Gores has been acting out, and writing down so well, for most of his professional life: the San Francisco private-eye film: part homage to Hammett, but mostly his own richly detailed vision of the world of skip-tracers, hired guns, sexy dames named April and Sherry, and corruptible gumshoes like the memorable Drinker Cope.

Cases may be a less-than-perfect novel, but it's definitely a valuable addition to our knowledge of Gores. It reads best as the source of local color for his greatest hits--from Hammett and Dead Skip to the more recent Menaced Assassin and Contract Null & Void.

Stakeout on Page Street and Other DKA Files by Joe Gores

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Joe Gores is a mystery writer's mystery writer. For more than 30 years he's been writing novels and short stories, many of them DKA files. DKA stands for Daniel Kearny Associates, a fictitious agency specializing in repo work, which is very closely based on the agency Gores worked for while honing his craft as a writer. In a fascinating introduction to the 12 DKA files in Stakeout on Page Street, Gores describes his life as a repo man, his relationship with the real and fictitious characters at DKA, and the encouragement he received from Anthony Boucher, who suggested he make contact with Fred Dannay, who eventually published all of these stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Although Gores has written other short stories and full length novels, it is those about the men and women at DKA that most capture the imagination. These stories are procedural, telling of the day-to-day grunt work of the repo man. There are no guns, no flashy showdowns, no huge body counts, because, as Gores explains, nobody wants to kill or get killed over the repossession of a car for the bank. But the stories are gripping nonetheless. How can a simple repossession drive a woman to suicide? In File #1 the answer is: all too easily when you're young and you've picked the wrong man to love.
Gores's sixth full-length DKA novel will be published in 2001, and we owe a lot to the small publishing company of Crippen & Landru for reintroducing us, after a hiatus of several years, to Larry Ballard, Kathy Onoda, Dan Kearny, and all the hard-working folks at DKA. If you haven't met them before, this is the perfect introduction.

Book Description
ALL THE DKA FILES STORIES
More the 30 years ago a young private investigator named Joe Gores was encouraged by the great mystery critic Anthony Boucher to record his experiences in a series of short stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Thus began the first series of tales that looked at a PI's cases as they actually happened, from the very serious (for instance, when a repo-man - someone who repossesses cars when loans are in default - can send a woman to suicide) to the comic (as when the Dan Kearny associates have to grab a fire engine that hasn't been paid for). And the characters are just as colorful, ranging from professional conmen to a gypsy who issues a curse as her car is driven away.

Stakeout on Page Street includes a new introduction and prefaces to each story by the author, and a complete checklist of Joe Gores's mystery novels and short stories.

About the Author
Since writing the DKA short stories, Joe Gores has become famous as Edgar winner for Best First Novel (A Time for Predators, 1969), the author of such novels as Hammett (and the screenplay based upon it) and the creator of telescripts for Columbo, Kojak, Magnum, P.I., and many other programs.

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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