Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding (USA 2020)

From the Publisher:
"A thriller in the best Hammett/Chandler tradition... Mr. Gores, as always, writes beautifully, with never a wasted word and with a fine feeling for characterization." -- The New York Times

Due to an "irregular" case handled by a now-deceased agent, the State of California is hell-bent on revoking Dan Kearny's private investigator's license. What began as a dispute over an insignificant sum has spiraled into maelstrom of deception, conspiracy, and violence, launching Kearny and his associates on a cross-country search for witnesses who can clear the company's name. Before long they discover others following in their footsteps -- with deadly intent.

This new edition of the third book in Joe Gores's DKA File series includes a bonus DKA short story, "File #7: O Black and Unknown Bard."

Joe Gores (1931-2011) won Edgar Awards in three separate categories: Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and Best TV Series Segment. His work repossessing cars provided grist for the mill of his DKA series, making them -- in the words of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine -- "[as] authentic as a fist in your face."

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding. A DKA File Novel. Dover Crime Classics, ISBN: 9780486839271 (March, 2020), 224 p., $14.95, eBook $11.99 (?).

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding (UK 2015)

From the Publisher:
The facts: an 'irregular' collection could cost Dan Kearny his shield. But the small, disputed sum soon reveals a web of deception, conspiracy and violence, and only an eyewitness can slice through the tightening snare.

The task: save DKA - whatever it takes. Track down the seven possible witnesses. Follow every lead to the bitter end - be it to the heart of the mob, the Sacramento Statehouse, or all the way across the country...

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding. Orion Books / The Murder Room, ISBN: 9781471917523 (February, 2015), eBook, 0.44 MB (240 p.),£4.99.

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
"AN ADRENALINE-PUMPING, NATIONWIDE SEARCH... CONDUCTED IN LARGE PART BY THE NIFTIEST BLACK OP IN THE LITERATURE." -- Time
The men and women of Daniel Kearny Associates are used to finding people who don't want to be found. Now their careers depend on it. The state wants to yank DKA's license over a $200 snafu. But the mix-up is only the beginning. When DKA investigators hunt down a prostitute on the run they realize that they've been set up by some serious players -- including a high-powered lawyer with ties to the mob. Hardened detectives, Daniel Kearny's men find themselves on an exhausting cross-country search that takes them through star-crossed lives and into the kind of dark alleys that hold answers... and death.

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 illustration and design by John Mattos

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding. A DKA File Novel. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0446403156 (January, 1993), 212 p., $5.50.

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding (USA 1981)

From the Publisher:
THE STATE IS GUNNING TO LIFT DKA'S LICENSE. CRUCIAL WITNESSES ARE
Gone, No Forwarding
The facts: An "irregular" collection may cost Dan Kearney his shield. But the small disputed sum soon reveals a web of deception, conspiracy, and violence, and only an eyewitness can slice through the tightening snare.

The task: Save DKA -- whatever it takes. Track down the seven possible witnesses. Follow every lead to the bitter end -- be it the heart of the mob, the Sacramento Statehouse, or all the way across the country...

"A FIRST-RATE PUZZLER!" -- The Milwaukee Journal
"ADRENALINE-PUMPING!" -- Time

Cover photograph by Anthony Loew

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345292081 (November, 1981), 183 p., $2.25.

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding (USA 1978)

From the Publisher:
"I'm going to have your license, shamus!"
The line is as familiar to television viewers and readers of detective fiction as the blonde in the bedroom or the bottle in the drawer. But when the State of California cold-bloodedly sets out to grab Dan Kearny's license, the phrase is no longer a cliché. The "irregular" case upon which the state is building its suit was handled by Kathy Onoda. Now she is dead. As the disciplinary hearings before the State Bureau of Private Investigators proceed, Kearny's central problem becomes: Who could have witnessed the events in the DKA Oakland office on a rainy Friday afternoon nearly a year before?

Seven people. Kearny's staff ranges the state and then the country in search of them, but they are mysteriously Gone, No Forwarding from their addresses. The search becomes desperate when Kearny's detectives find other, deadly hunters dogging their footsteps. As Bart Heslip becomes enmeshed in the strange odyssey of a fugitive black girl, it becomes evident that her testimony, and hers alone, can unravel the intricate human puzzle at the core of the novel.

Moving, often comic, always taut, Gone, No Forwarding is another intensely real picture of modern investigative techniques from Joe Gores, the writer Anthony Boucher called "one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett." The author gives us break-neck action, sparkling characterizations, machine-gun dialogue and, as critic James Sandoe said, "He handles violence as a wise man handles nettles."

Critical Acclaim for Joe Gores and His Work
"The Continental Op could do no better." -- Newgate Callendar, New York Times Book Review
"A tough, taut writer who views his subject matter unsparingly and unsentimentally." -- Jean M. White, Washington Post
"This private eye procedural basis is Gores' specialty, maybe his invention, and he has given us a cracking good yarn to demonstrate it." -- Lenore Glen Offord, San Francisco Chronicle
"First-class private eye fiction." -- Alice Cromie, Chicago Tribune
"Joe Gores offers a fine and diverting picture of what a detective agency really does." -- Robert Weimer, Newsday
"Superb in its swift, to-the-point plotting and on-the-mark dialogue. Dan Kearny's detectives are Lew Archer in concert." -- O. L. Bailey, Saturday Review

JOE GORES has written five previous highly acclaimed novels of suspense, a fact book on marine salvage, some one hundred short stories, and several teleplays for the popular CBS-TV drama Kojak. His screenplay for his novel Hammett is being filmed by Francis Coppola. Joe Gores is the only writer ever awarded Mystery Writers of America "Edgars" in three separate writing categories: novel, short story, TV drama. With Gone, No Forwarding he returns to the adventures of his fictional Daniel Kearny Associates detective agency, based on the dozen years the author spent as a private investigator in California. He lives near San Francisco with his wife Dori, two children, three cats, a rabbit and a seventy-five-year-old Japanese carp.

Jacket design: Robert Aulicino

Joe Gores: Gone, No Forwarding. A New DKA File Novel Starring the Detectives of Daniel Kearny Associates, Skip Tracers. Random House, ISBN: 0394411919 (March, 1978), 202 p., $6.95.