Dead Skip

DKA File #1

by Joe Gores

Dan Kearny Associates is a San Francisco private investigation firm employing some of the most memorable characters in mystery fiction. P.I. Bart Heslip, a former boxer, is in a coma after being brutally beaten. Now it's up to his coworkers at DKA to sift through his current cases to discover the culprit--before it's too late. Ties in with the Mysterious Press hardcover release of Gores' 32 Cadillacs, the next DKA novel. Previous publisher: Ballantine.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime

197 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Joe Gores (1931-2011) was the author of the acclaimed DKA series of street-level crime and detection, as well as the stunning suspense novels Dead Man and Menaced Assassin.

He served in the U.S. Army - writing biographies of generals at the Pentagon - was educated at the University of Notre Dame and Stanford, and spent twelve years as a San Francisco private investigator. The author of dozens of novels, screenplays, and television scripts, he won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and Japan's Maltese Falcon Award.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When repo man Bart Heslip is found in a coma in a wrecked, repossessed Jaguar, his college, former cop Larry Ballard, can't shake the idea that someone staged the accident to cover something up. Armed with only his wits and Heslip's last two days worth of cases, Ballard goes up against a three day deadline to find a would-be killer.

I initially bought this because I knew it was a crossver with Richard Stark's The Plunder Squad. It proved to be a pretty read all on its own.

Dead Skip reads like an episode of The Wire if The Wire was about a bunch of private detectives working for Dan Kearny and Associates, a repo agency. Ballard runs all over San Fransciso and surrounding areas, running down any lead he can find, looking for the man who put Bart Heslip in a coma. Needless to say, it boils down to legwork and talking to people, not booze and broads.

The case was serpentine in its complexity and not easily solveable. The dead leads outnumbered the useful ones by 12 to 1. By the time Ballard finally got on the trail, I was as worn out as he was.

Kearny and Ballard were both fairly well drawn characters for a book of this type from the era when it was written. Kearny doggedly looking for his man reminded me of Matthew Scudder a bit. Kearny could have easily been a world-weary police chief in another life.

The crossover with Parker made me want to reread all the Richard Stark novels. Speaking of Stark, the writing reminded me of Ed McBain collaborating with Richard Stark, despite both of them being pseudonyms and not actual people.

Dead Skip was a fun read and not just because of the Parker crossover. I'll be looking for the subsequent DKA books. Four out of five stars.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book in the DKA File series.

Dan Kearny Associates is a San Francisco private investigation firm employing some memorable characters in mystery fiction. P.I. Bart Heslip, a former boxer, is in a coma after being brutally beaten. Now it's up to his coworkers at DKA to sift through his current cases to discover the culprit. After dropping off a car late at night Heslip is attacked from behind, put in a car, and rolled over the side of a hill, leaving him in a coma. While the police conclude that he was drink driving and lost control, his colleagues disagree. Heslip’s close friend, Ballard, sets himself the task of running down the attacker within 72 hours. He suspects it must be related to one of the many cases that Heslip was working on, but working out which one and then locating them is not going to be straightforward.

Gores (1931-2011) was a three-time Edgar Award winner. Gores died in a Marin County, California, hospital 50 years to the day after Dashiell Hammett died. Gores does for P.I.s what Ed McBain did for cops in his "87th Precinct" series, with the difference that McBain was never a cop where Gores was a P.I.

The Donald Westlake novel "Drowned Hopes" (1990), featuring caper-meister Dortmunder, shares an entire chapter in common with Gore's DKA novel 32 Cadillacs (1992).

[Linda Strong · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Dan Kearny Associates is a private investigation firm in San Francisco. PI Bart Heslip has been charged with locating cars that need to be repossessed. Following a long hard day, he's headed back to the office to finish up the paperwork.

The next morning, Bart is found in a repossessed car that ran off the road. There's the odor of alcohol emanating from his shirt. He is rushed to the hospital, where the doctors are concerned that he may never wake up. The cops are listing this as a one-car accident.

Bart's colleagues and friends aren't buying this. For one, Bart would absolutely never drive a car that's been brought in. Two .. he only drinks a certain alcoholic beverage and then, only rarely. Three .. his head has been beaten in ... accident or not?

His fellow investigators start looking though all Bart's cases to discover who may have done this. There are plenty of suspects .. most of whom don't like Bart.

I've just learned more about repossessing cars than I ever thought possible. It's certainly not a job I would like. People can get very angry when someone tries to take their cars. There are plenty of cases to look at ... plenty of varying motives ... One by one, the cases are cleared until there are only two possible left.

There is constant movement which is nicely paced. More mysterious than suspenseful, this page turner kept me riveted and trying to pull a Perry Mason and identify whodunit.

DEAD SKIP was originally published in 1972, so all the modern means of detection are missing.... no cell phones, no DNA data bases, etc. Fair warning --- text contains some racial and cultural references of the era which may be offensive to some.

Many thanks to Dover Publications / Netgalley. I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

[Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first entry in Joe Gores' critically esteemed DKA series. "DKA" is an abbreviation of "Dan Kearney and Associates" ...they're skip tracers. You borrow money from a bank to underwrite your purchase of a vehicle and fail to repay that loan, DKA send out their skip tracers to retrieve your car.

These guys (and ladies) aren't private eyes. They're not legally allowed to carry a gun or other deadly weapon. They're not legally allowed to beat the blue Jesus out of mouthy types who call them filthy names. I might be wrong but I don't believe they're even allowed to strike back against an assailant who attacks them.

These are people who have to use their brains to work themselves out of hairy situations.

This novel was only the second novel Joe Gores ever wrote. He wrote at least 4 entries in the DKA series. He would go on to further success when he published the awesome novel, , later turned into one of the finest neo-noirs of the 1980s.

As a result of being only his 2nd novel, this one is a bit slow for the first half. Then it picks up and roars to an ending in the final third of the novel.

The plot hardly matters. One of DKA's finest skip tracers is brutally attacked and left in a coma. His best friend at DKA, Larry Ballard, convinces Kearney to allow him 48 hours to apprehend the culprit.

We get loads of suspects, lots of San Francisco and surrounding real estate (circa 1972) color, and we get a fairly detailed procedural. We also get a cameo by Richard Stark's Parker in a nice 3-4 page section. Incidentally, this same segment is retold from Parker's point of view in one of the 1st 16 Richard (Donald Westlake) Stark's Parker novels ( ?)

Fairly entertaining novel if a bit dated. I happen to be a huge fan of Joe Gores so I should have mentioned this is a reread. I read this over ten (at least… more like 20) years ago and had completely forgotten everything about it except for the Parker cameo.


Well, times had changed.

But the subjects hadn't. People still defrauded, defaulted, embezzled -money or goods or chattels. They cheated their employers or their wives, skipped out, dropped out of sight, just plain dropped out. Skid row or hippie commune, juice, pills, grass, acid, skin-popping or mainlining skag - the old-time cons had used a better name for the white stuff, shit.

It usually came down to money. Somebody wanted more than he had, or wanted what it could buy. Somebody else would spend some to get back his chattels, or his missing daughter or the embezzler who had nickel-and-dimed the books.

And you went after them- for money. You found them, most of them. Damned tough to stay out of the way of an agency like DKA if it really wanted you. You had to change your name, dye your hair, keep your kids out of school, quit your union or your profession, tear up credit cards, abandon your wife, not show up at your mother's funeral, run your car into a deep river, quit paying taxes, get off welfare.

Because every habit pattern was a doorway into your life, a doorway that the skip tracers and field agents with the right key could open. The right clue, he supposed, in the detective-story sense.


Joe Gores was heavily influenced by Dashiell Hammett as this novel shows. Not a bad influence.

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice 70s noir with repo men chasing around San Francisco to find out why one of their colleagues was beaten into a coma. Not content with merely name-dropping Richard Stark early on, the book goes on to feature a whole scene with Parker in it, which may be an exact reflection of the same scene in Plunder Squad, but I can't be bothered to dig it out and check. If I find more of these old-time paperbacks I might pick them up.

[John Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent PI procedural, with the DKA repo gang out to solve the mystery of an assault on one of their own. Great repo man action, excellent early '70s Bay Area background (even daring to leave SF proper for seldom-visited East Bay locales; Concord, anyone?), and not one but two Richard Stark/Parker references for the in crowd. Recommended

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool tie in to Richard Stark's Plunder Squad

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just read this book again, after turning it up for a quarter at the library sale. It was well worth the quarter & well worth the re-read. It's a DKA novel -- Daniel Kearney Associates -- wherein one of their agents is assaulted and left for dead in the middle of the night. This is the story of the rest of the crew trying to find out what happened.

Several things make this a really interesting read in 2011. First, it's a non-romantic portrait of the city at the time. Gores' locations are really there, and are not their for any purpose except to show where things happened. He isn't commenting on anything but the action, and this way he seems to me to show a very good portrait of the city.

The book, in its detail of a relatively boring type of detective work -- repossessing cars -- also isn't romanticized, but shows what seems to be a real way of working. Interesting to think of how the world has changed since 1972, and how this work must have changed. No computers, no cell phones. Young people reading this today must be confused at all the talk of carbon copies and the like.

But what makes the book worth reading is the low-key characterizations of the DKA crew and the portrait of the city.

[Christopher Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of a procedural is pretty well established at this point, particularly with police stories. Show how the work is done step by step on the job, detailing how a case is unfolded and what is done to solve the crime. Show the paperwork, the interviews, the process that is followed.

Dead Skip is a private detective procedural. Focusing on reposession of automobiles, this case is mostly internal: one of the Dan Kearny Associates detectives is attacked and beaten into a coma while doing his job. Why did it happen? What did he mean when he left a message that something was bothering him about one of the cars he repo'd?

The case is followed step by step, each interview, each document, all the paperwork and procedure of the agency, each of its members and how they interact, and why the boss is the boss and better than all of them.

Wrapped through this is a fascinating snapshot of San Francisco culture circa 1972 with racism and sexism being dealt with along with the oddities of people living there and the remnants of the old city.

Gores is a master at the craft of the detective novel and this the first in his DKA series is a home run.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe Gores was a private eye in real life, and this early novel is a good account of a San Francisco P.I.'s life. As you might expect, it's a long way from Spade and Archer. The plot involves a firm that specializes in car repos and skip chasing; when one of their operatives is beaten into a coma by an unknown assailant after remarking to a colleague that he's found something funny about one of his cases, the colleague refuses to leave it to the cops. The hunt involves lots of driving around the Bay Area and lots of the kind of patient legwork (and paperwork) that characterizes the business in real life. This is a P.I. procedural with none of the old P.I. cliches (the bottle in the desk drawer, the non-stop wisecracks, etc.). High marks for realism, possibly a few points off if you're looking for Chinatown-level drama. But a good solid read.

[Aaron Martz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The details about the everyday life of a bounty hunter and repo man are fascinating, but the rest of this book is sub-par. There are an interesting array of characters, and it's possible other books in the series are better than this one, but the plot of this one is thin and drawn-out, and the ending is a talkative mess. Gores tries for a McBain style terseness, and sometimes he succeeds, but the rest of the time it's obvious, almost amateurish, imitation.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book -- tight, engaging, and a great period piece of the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s. I wrote a blog entry about it: http://douglevin.blogspot.com/2011/08...

[Jane Mackay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in Gores' DKA File series. I'm now a Joe Gores fan. With a degree from Stanford, he became a private investigator (repo man) in SF because of his idolization of Hammett. He does not let his idol down.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Dead boring. I read this only because it shared a chapter with the Parker novel Plunder Squad. And that chapter is the only interesting thing in this novel. It’s exactly as advertised: the very same incident from the perspective of Kearny rather than Parker. The rest of the novel is a dull detective procedural involving a repo firm investigating an employee’s assault. I felt no compelling interest in the crime, the characters, the plot, or the investigation beyond the brief connection with the world of Parker in one chapter.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, yet bland. The only real draw is the 1970's flavor. Has a fun Richard Stark reference. The lead detective on the job is nothing if not average and boring. I think that other books by Gores might be a bit more interesting, still willing to give him another chance.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

lf you want the feel of a Hammett tale written in the early '70's, pick up copy of the DNA files. With a wonderful sense of place in ,70's San Francisco, lean and direct prose. This is a classic PI/Crime novel.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun mystery novel. The detective is a repo man and the suspects are all repos. Good characters, and a cameo by Richard Stark's Parker!

[Lucy Leigh J · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ short & sweet skip tracing tale written noir style.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable little hard boiled procedural. Tight prose (Gores was an admirer of Hammett, and it shows), taught pacing, with evocative descriptions of San Francisco and the East Bay suburbs. I didn't take the time to look up the actual addresses on Google street view, but for the most part Gores uses real place names (unlike "Bay City" for Santa Monica ala Chandler or "Santa Teresa" for Santa Barbara ala Macdonald). Some of Gores' references to urban decay or attempts at portraying black American vernacular read pretty dated now (book was written in 1972), but this is a relatively minor complaint.

Most uniquely, Gores protagonists are a team of investigators, rather than your typical loner hard boiled P.I. That's kind of refreshing - the various employees at DKA form an ad hoc family, and pull together to defend one of their own. This is the first in a series, and I look forward to reading more.

[Steve Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Loosely linked crossover novel with Richard Stark's novel Plunder Squad *

Dead is a fun, fast-moving and P.I.-gritty novel that features the East Bay and San Francisco area, written with feels-like-you're-there detailed effectiveness. Good book for a lazy autumn afternoon read, worth owning. Followed by the next DKA File novel Final Notice.


(This review originally appeared on the Reading & Writing By Pub Light site.)

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

DEAD SKIP - Good
Gores, Joe - 1st in DKA File series

Dan Kearny Associates is a San Francisco private investigation firm employing some of the most memorable characters in mystery fiction. P.I. Bart Heslip, a former boxer, is in a coma after being brutally beaten. Now it's up to his coworkers at DKA to sift through his current cases to discover the culprit--before it's too late.

Good, but not great.

[Steven jb · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fair detective story. It started out okay, but except for Kearny, the characterizations were not satisfactory. The story seemed plausible but felt too sketchy at times. The writing was fair as was the ending.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book, the first in the DKA series. Thought I'd start with the first of this series by Joe Gores...establishes who's who before reading others in the series.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent repo man mystery - first in the series.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great descriptions of San Francisco Bay Area and clever investigations. Recommended.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good. First in a series about a San Francisco agency who repossess cars. I assume the characters continue on.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dead Skip, first published in 1972, was the first book in the Dan Kearny Associates series that charted the work of a private investigation company in San Francisco. Gores worked as a PI for twelve years and his knowledge of how to track down people and property is evident in the story. In this case an employee of DKA is attacked and left in coma, the crime crudely faked as a road traffic accident. A young investigator, Ballard, hunts for the killer, aided by Kearny himself. The strength of the book is in the procedural elements and the pacing. Gores keeps the prose tight and focused on the action. The result is a story that moves along at a fair clip, but somewhat at the expense of characterisation, which is mainly inferred from behaviour and dialogue. Moreover, there is little in the way of backstory – in many ways, the storytelling is like a television script. The plotting is nicely done, with Ballard unearthing new clues and chasing an elusive killer, though I wasn’t quite convinced by the denouement. That said, it was an enjoyable, quick read.