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.

The first DKA File novel, Dead Skip, was called “superb in its swift, to-the-point plotting and on-the-mark dialogue. Dan Kearny’s detectives are Lew Archer in concert, and Joe Gores’ novel ranks at the head of its class.”

— O. L. Bailey, Saturday Review

In Final Notice Joe Gores has done it again. Here are the same characters, the same “fist in the face of authenticity.”[1] Joe Gores demonstrates once more how fresh and compelling the detective novel really can be.

“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.”