Joe Gores: Dead Skip (USA 2019)

From the Publisher:
"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."

"[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: Dead Skip. A DKA File Novel. Dover Crime Classics, ISBN: 9780486834658 (July, 2019), 196 p., $14.95, eBook $11.99 (?).

Joe Gores: Dead Skip (UK 2015)

From the Publisher:
Ballard has seventy-two hours to find out who attacked his partner, Bart Heslip, who's lying in the hospital in a coma. Now Ballard is racing around the frayed edges of Oakland and San Francisco tracing down deadbeats. A stripper, an embezzler and an ex-con all have repo'd cars in common. Do they also share a murder? The clock's ticking away like Bart's heartbeat, but Ballard is up against a dead skip, a blank wall.

Then Ballard's boss, Dan Kearny, jumps into the hunt, loving every minute of it - and hurtling them both toward the barrel of a gun...

Joe Gores: Dead Skip. Orion Books / The Murder Room, ISBN: 9781471917509 (February, 2015), eBook, 0.51 MB (240 p.),£4.99.

Joe Gores: Dead Skip (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
"THE CONTINENTAL OP COULD DO NO BETTER!...A TRADITIONAL CRIME NOVEL OUT OF BLACK MASK, HAMMETT, AND CHANDLER. GORES... HAS COME UP WITH A WINNER." -- Newgate Callendar, New York Times

Ballard had 72 hours to find out who attacked his partner, Bart Heslip. Bart was no help. He was in the hospital in a coma; his woman doing a slow burn by his side. Now Ballard was racing around the frayed edges of Oakland and San Francisco tracing down deadbeats. A lush stripper, an embezzler, and an ex-con all had repo'd cars in common. Did they also share a murder? With the clock ticking away like Bart Heslip's heartbeat, Ballard was up against a dead skip, a blank wall. Then Ballard's boss, Dan Kearny, jumped into the hunt, loving every minute of it -- and hurtling them both toward the pointed barrel of a gun...

Like Dashiell Hammett, Joe Gores actually worked as a private eye before he became a mystery writer. The author of nine gritty, realistic novels of suspense and numerous screenplays and teleplays based on his twelve-year experience as a San Francisco P.I., Joe Gores has won three Edgar Awards and broad critical acclaim. His novels based on the Daniel Kearny Associates (DKA) agency are universally acknowledged as classics of the genre.

Cover design and illustration by John Mattos

Joe Gores: Dead Skip. A DKA File Novel. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0446403121 (December, 1992), 198 p., $4.99.

Joe Gores: Dead Skip (USA 1972)

From the Publisher:
Dead Skip is the first novel in a remarkable new series Ellery Queen calls "authentic as a fist in your face." With it, Joe Gores, the double Edgar-winner who spent twelve years as a private investigator, shows just how fresh and compelling the detective novel really can be.

JOE GORES spent twelve years as a private investigator in San Francisco, an experience which makes Dead Skip as real as a tapped phone. He holds degrees in English literature from Notre Dame and Stanford, and has lived in such exotic places as Tahiti, Kenya and the Seychelles. He has taught school in East Africa, has logged in Alaska, has managed a "hot-sheet" motel and a weight-lifting gym. In 1970 he became the first dual Edgar-winner in Mystery Writers of America history -- for his first novel, A Time of Predators, and for the short story "Goodbye, Pops." His work, including an exhaustive maritime history, Marine Salvage, and over a hundred short stories, has been translated into nine languages. Currently living in San Francisco with his wife, Susan, he is working on novels, screen plays and short fiction.

Jacket design by Ted Bernstein

Joe Gores: Dead Skip. A DKA first Novel. Random House, ISBN: 0394481577 (November, 1972), 184 p., $4.95.