Joe Gores: Cases (UK 2015)

From the Publisher:
It's 1953, and Pierce Duncan leaves college an innocent. Seeking the freedom of the road, Dunc sets off to see America. His road trip brings strange, fateful encounters: with a savage Georgia chain gang; with a killer on a lonely Texas road; and with the darker side of the Las Vegas fight game. Finally, Dunc reaches San Francisco, a city seething with the unexpected.

In the backstreets and along the freight lines, Dunc meets beautiful women, dangerous men... and murder. In California, home of the lost and the outcast, he joins up with the hard-nosed head of a private investigation agency, and his life changes for ever.

A violence-marked love letter to a time in America now lost, Cases is as vivid as a lightning storm over a deserted highway, as unforgettable as a first kiss, as haunting as a dead woman's eyes.

Joe Gores: Cases. Orion Books / The Murder Room, ISBN: 9781471917622 (May, 2015), eBook, 0.71 MB (240 p.),£4.99.

Joe Gores: Cases (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
In 1953 Pierce Duncan leaves college as an innocent and sets off to see America. His road trip will take him from the savagery of a Georgia chain gang to a wild ride through Texas to the darkest side of the Las Vegas fight game, and finally to San Francisco, the far end of the world. Along the backstreets and freight lines Duncan will meet beautiful women, dangerous men, and murder. And he'll learn everything about being a man-and about brutal betrayal. A violence-marked love letter to a lost time in America, CASES is also an ode to the art of writing itself: writing as vivid as lightning over a desert highway, as unforgettable as a first kiss, as haunting as a dead woman's eye.

Joe Gores: Cases. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0446677930 (August, 2001), 354 p., $6.99 (?).

Joe Gores: Cases (USA 1999)

From the Publisher:
Critics have called Gores "a master" of crime writing (Chicago Sun-Times), "a first rate crime writer" (Houston Post), and "one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett" (Anthony Boucher). With his new novel, Mr. Gores has written a roller-coaster roman à clef, a portrait of the detective as a young man, a tale that throbs with bebop beat and roams like a hot tenor saxophone riff...

CASES
In 1953 Pierce Duncan leaves college as an innocent and sets off to see America. His road trip will take him from the savagery of a Georgia chain gang to a wild ride through Texas to the darkest side of the Las Vegas fight game -- and, finally, to San Francisco, the far end of the world. Along the backstreets and freight lines Duncan will meet beautiful women, dangerous men, and murder. And in California, home of the lost and the outcast, he will join up with the dynamic head of a private investigation agency. Here he will learn everything about being a man -- and about brutal betrayal.

Joe Gores has written a violence-marked love letter to a lost time in America, and a San Francisco rolling with the unexpected. With Duncan's mind teeming with the cadences of Hemingway and Joyce, CASES is also an ode to the art of writing itself: writing as vivid as a lightning storm over a lonely highway, as unforgettable as a first kiss, as haunting as a dead woman's eyes.

JOE GORES is 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. Born in 1931, 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 has won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and Japan's Maltese Falcon Award. He lives in northern California.

Jacket Design and Illustration by Daniel Pelavin

Joe Gores: Cases. A Novel. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0892965932 (January, 1999), 354 p., $23.00.