Cases

This book is hard to put down for a moment, after the first chapter. Joe Gores writing is superb: tight, interesting, intelligent. While containing an abundance of unlikely coincidence at a couple of points, it also pursues each end result of the complex plot to its reasonable climax.

This book is basically a pretty flimsy excuse to remember being young and strong and smart and free as a bird in Las Vegas and San Francisco in 1953, but I loved it. The plot strains credulity, but read it for the atmosphere.

In 1953, Pierce Duncan leaves Notre Dame University to gain inspiration a an author by touring the United States, planning to keep a notebook as a precursor to his career as a writer. Just like Joel McCrea, Pierce finds the underbelly of America. The Georgia police arrest Pierce and place him on a chain gang. On another trek, he meets a killer in Texas. He tangles with a heavyweight in Nevada and finally comes to San Francisco without flowers in his hair. Instead of writing, Pierce becomes a private investigator working with veteran "Drinker" Cope, who teaches him the business of locating missing persons (especially bail jumpers) and midnight stakeouts. What Pierce has learned from his travels and his association with Drinker is that America is the land of the avarice and the home of the deadly. CASES is an interesting period piece that seems to revere the under side of the early Eisenhower era. The well-designed story line and the characters, especially Pierce, are intriguing in a retrospective sort of way. Joe Gores pays homage to the 1950's. However, at times his writing seems a bit disjointed, which is not surprising since segments were previously published elsewhere. Still, Mr. Gores shows the talent that has won him an Edgar as he scribes a warm semi-autobiographical private investigatior tale that would have pleased Hammett and Gardner.