Dead Skip

A repo man turns up unconscious and near death in a Jaguar he just reclaimed from its unrightful owner. The police smell whisky and think he was joyriding, but at least one colleague at Daniel Kearny Associates (DKA) isn't buying and sets out to figure out what really happened, with a 72-hour time limit imposed by his apparently-unsympathetic boss. This is the first book in Joe Gores' DKA series, and the second I've read after "32 Cadillacs," which others rave about being the cream of the series but which left me a bit flat. This one, however, is really good, and I found myself warming to it despite a slow start and my low expectations. The feeling of the book is dog-eared and desperate. After a few pages of setting the scene, an already-tired Larry Ballard sets about trying to unravel the mystery of who clocked his partner by checking up every one of the last few cases on his partner's file. This is when the story begins to take off, not so much in terms of plot (it takes a while for Ballard to narrow down the list, and longer still to figure out why the final suspect might have done it) but in terms of giving the reader a sense of what the life of a repo man is all about. Ballard meets up with all kinds of people, lawabiding and otherwise, like the 30-something woman who left her husband to shack up with a teenaged boy, the movers who loll around their office drunk as skunks on a weekday morning, and the rock musician who plays at a club called "Freaks." It's set in San Francisco in the early 70s (Gores wrote the book in 1972) and you get a real sense of what the city was turning into in the decade and a half since "Vertigo." I didn't mind the long time it took for Ballard to get to the bottom of things. I was enjoying the ride. Gores gives you just enough story with each person to give you a sense of life's richness and cruelties, then moves on to the next one as Ballard keeps on the clock. Gores is not only sharp and deft at building a multi-faceted plot, he is really funny. "Why do those middle-aged swingers, when they start swinging, always buy a T-Bird?" one guy asks Ballard. Another woman old enough to be his grandmother loses her matronly reserve when asked about a bail skipper: "She made a two-word comment about Griffin and his mother that was probably more ritual than fact..." I was still laughing at that one a dozen pages later. Gores's dialogue, pacing, and rich sense of character really put him in league with other great modern-day mystery writers like Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain who typically give you a lot more to chew over than a dead body. "Dead Skip" would be worthwhile reading even if it didn't lead to a series of other books. The best part is there's more of them still ahead for me.

DEAD SKIP is the first book about the Daniel Kearny Associates (DKA) agency. Kearny is a superman with a massive jaw, flat nose and a mountain of determination. He is a hard-driving boss and a mentor for a crew of mostly younger agents who mature noticeably throughout the series. DEAD SKIP is one of the better DKA mysteries by Joe Gores.

When one of their co-workers almost dies in a suspicious car accident, the guys at the detective agency go through his files trying to figure out who pushed the car over the cliff. In this sense, this is typical, if not classic, PI fiction. So why read this book? I read it because a critic named Gardner named it one of the best dectective books of the 20th Century. I'm not sure if I'd go that far but it's a solid read. There are plenty of red herrings and a curve ball ending. It's also a bit of a time capsule. Readers with ties to the East Bay will enjoy the jaunts into cities rarely seen in fiction (Castro Valley and Concord).

This book was really hard to put. It's a shame that is no longer available. The writing is fast, excellent and intelligent. I really loved this book.