Dead Skip: A Dka File Novel, Paperback

"Raw reality. A tough, taut writer. Saves a gut-punch for the climax." -- The Washington Post

In the first book of Joe Gores's razor-sharp Daniel Kearny Associates series, a DKA investigator clings to life after a devastating car crash. The police are ready to write it off as a drunk driving incident, but the DKA team knows it was an attempted homicide. Now they have seventy-two hours to search the backstreets of San Francisco and find the truth about the "accident" from a stripper, an embezzler, an ex-con, and other unsavory characters. Gores, a former detective and three-time Edgar Award-winner, spins a gritty, fast-moving tale that mystery lovers can't resist and compares with the best of Hammett and Chandler. This new edition of Dead Skip features a bonus DKA short story, "File #2: Stakeout on Page Street."

"A traditional American crime novel, out of Black Mask, Hammett, and Chandler. . . . The Continental Op could do no more. . . . Gores] has come up with a winner." -- The New York Times

" Gores is] one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett." -- Anthony Boucher

"The hard, compelling smack of raw truth." -- Ellery Queen, on the DKA File series

Joe Gores (1931-2011) won Edgar Awards in three separate categories: Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and Best TV Series Segment. His many day jobs included truck driver, bodybuilding instructor, carny, and English teacher at a boys' school in Kenya as well as a dozen years as a private investigator in the San Francisco area. His work repossessing cars provided grist for the mill of his DKA series, making them -- in the words of Ellery Queen -- "[as] authentic as a fist in your face."