Joe Gores Books In Order

DKA File Books In Publication Order

  1. Dead Skip (1972)
  2. Final Notice (1973)
  3. Gone, No Forwarding (1978)
  4. 32 Cadillacs (1992)
  5. Contract Null & Void (1996)
  6. Stakeout on Page Street (2000)
  7. Cons, Scams & Grifts (2001)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. A Time of Predators (1969)
  2. Interface (1974)
  3. Hammett (1975)
  4. Come Morning (1986)
  5. Wolf Time (1989)
  6. Dead Man (1993)
  7. Menaced Assassin (1994)
  8. Cases (1999)
  9. Glass Tiger (2006)
  10. Spade & Archer (2009)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Honolulu, Port of Call (1974)
  2. Mostly Murder (1992)
  3. Speak of the Devil (1999)
  4. Lost Stories (With: Dashiell Hammett) (2005)

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Joe Gores Books Overview

32 Cadillacs

32 Cadillacs is the fourth novel in Joe Gores’ delightful series about the San Francisco private eye firm Dan Kearny Associates. This time the squadmust recover 32 Cadillacs stolen from their largest client by Gypsies to be a casket for their dying king. The result is a fast, furious, funny, nonstop action tale with esoteric Gypsy lore and hard edged investigation.

Contract Null & Void

Things aren’t going well for the tough private eyes of San Francisco based Dan Kearny Associates. Marriages are falling apart, associates are going to jail, and dowagers are demanding sexual favors. Before long, DKA’s cases begin to turn up murder and mayhem, bodies and blood, all engineered by someone who would like to see a troubled agency rendered null and void.

Stakeout on Page Street

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.

Cons, Scams & Grifts

In San Francisco, Dan Kearny Associates raids a classic car dealership, while in Los Angeles, a Gypsy’s dying words finger a Gypsy princess for his murder. In Hong Kong, a unique treasure has been stolen by gimlet eyed L.A. oil tycoon Victor Hess making Willem Ban de Post, in Rome, plot across continents with his uncle, the King of the Gypsies, to get it back. The mayhem continues when the Gypsies hire DKA to find their framed damsel in distress before the cops do, and a German baron hires DKA to test the defenses at Hess’ mountain fortress. But no one is exactly who or what they seem: everyone is conning, scamming, and grifting on all their twisted roads to Rome.

A Time of Predators

Otto Penzler and the Mystery Writers of America Present A Time of Predators by Joe Gores, winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel

The gang was restless, just looking for idle fun. They roughed up a man they thought was a homosexual but their game got out of hand and their victim was blinded.

It was Paula Halstead’s bad luck to witness the attack and catch a glimpse of one of the boys. After they got through with her, she killed herself.

The police have no leads and can’t find the culprits. Paula’s husband hires a private investigator to do what the police haven’t been able to with no success.

Curt Halstead refuses to give up; he will have his vengeance on the men who raped and tortured his wife, even if it means entering into their world of sex, violence, and murder.

Interface

Neil Fargo is a San Francisco private investigator hired by the wealthy Maxwell Stayton to find his missing daughter. His search takes him into the very heart of the city’s ugly underbelly. And Fargo makes the move into the drug business at just about the same time as Docker, a Vietnam veteran with close links to Fargo, is storming through San Francisco’s criminal underworld on a murderous campaign of revenge.

Hammett

From Chinatown’s dark alleys to the fog shrouded Golden Gate, crooked politicians ran San Francisco. To Hammet, retired Pinkerton detective and struggling writer, it was all just grist to his fictional mill. Until the night his pal walked into a baseball bat. Then Hammett hung up his typewriter, put on his gumshoes and went out into the brawling, swaggering city to find the brutal murderer.

Dead Man

Swept away from his loving family when his computer investigations make him the target of a mysterious enemy, Eddie Dain resurfaces as a trained killer with deadly instincts and a drive for revenge. NYT. PW. K.

Menaced Assassin

The chilling narrative of a ruthless assassin, the Raptor, is interspersed with those of Dante Stagnoro, a San Francisco Organized Crime investigator who seeks to stop the killings, and Will Dalton, the probable next victim. National Tour.

Cases

From Joe Gores, the highly acclaimed author of CONTRACT NULL & VOID and three time Edgar Allen Poe Award winner, comes a thrilling novel reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD with a taste of murder.

Pierce Duncan, a young man just out of Notre Dame, sets off for the roads and rails of postwar America, driven by Hemingway’s belief that ‘going where you have to go, doing what you have to do, seeing what you have to see’ is what makes one a writer. For Pierce, it also leads to strange, fateful meetings: with a redneck guard on a Georgian chain gang; with a killer on a lonely Texas road; and with a corrupt Los Angeles cult leader. The most influential encounter is with a hard nosed private eye who changes Pierce’s life forever, leading him to San Francisco, where he must decide his ultimate path in the City by the Bay.

Glass Tiger

Brendan Thorne, ex Ranger, ex sniper for the CIA, has foresworn violence when his presence is demanded at a top secret meeting. Halden Corwin, legendary Vietnam sniper and mercenary, has vowed to assassinate the recently elected president of the United States, and the government’s computers have picked Thorne as the most likely person to find Corwin. Special agent Terrill Hatfield s crack FBI team will take care of the rest. But when the plan doesn t go as described, Thorne discovers he s been drawn into a web of lies, ambitions, and double crosses that will force him to stand and fight. A fast paced thriller full of stunning revelations, Glass Tiger will leave the reader breathless.

Spade & Archer

The stunning prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s crime classic THE MALTESE FALCON. When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favours, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bit*ch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer’s wife. What we don’t know is how Spade became who he is. Now Spade & Archer completes the picture. 1921: Spade sets up his own agency in San Francisco and clients quickly start coming through the door. The next seven years will see him dealing with booze runners, water front thugs, stowaways, banking swindlers, gold smugglers, bumbling cops, and the illegitimate daughter of Sun Yat sen; with murder, other men’s mistresses, and long missing money. He’ll bring in Archer as a partner, though it was Archer who stole his girl while he was fighting in World War I. He’ll tangle with a villain who never loses his desire to make Spade pay big for ruining what should’ve been the perfect crime. And he’ll fall in love though it won’t turn out for the best. It never does with dames…
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Lost Stories (With: Dashiell Hammett)

Dashiell Hammett, the bestselling creator of Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man, was one of the America’s most entertaining authors, and one of its most influential. Even so, many of Hammett s stories including some of his best have been out of the reach of anyone but a handful of scholars and collectors until now.

Lost Stories rescues 21 long lost Hammett stories, all either never published in an anthology or unavailable for decades. Stories range from the first fiction Hammett ever wrote to his last. All stories have been restored to their original versions, replacing often wholesale cuts with the original text for the first time.

Readers of Hammett’s famous mysteries will be surprised by the variety of stories here. They include Hammett’s first detective fiction, humorous satires, adventure yarns, a sensitive autobiographical piece, and a tale Ellery Queen promises ‘is one of the most startling stories you have ever read.’

For each story, Hammett researcher Vince Emery tells how Hammett s life shaped the story and how the story affected his life. Emery s comments reveal surprises about Hammett s life not covered in any other book.

To round out this celebration of Hammett, three time Edgar Award winner Joe Gores has written an introduction describing how Hammett influenced literature, movies, television, and Gores own life.

Lost Stories is the first title in The Ace Performer Collection, a new series of books by and about Dashiell Hammett, crowned ‘the ace performer’ by his disciple Raymond Chandler.

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