Contract Null & Void - Hardcover

Gores, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892965924 ISBN 13: 9780892965922

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1996

Synopsis

San Francisco's top private investigative agency, Daniel Kearny Associates, becomes the target of a ruthless enemy out to destroy it as its detectives probe an insidious and lethal plot against labor union executives. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Joe Gores is the master of a rare and precious commodity, the screwball crime caper that is funny enough and intelligent enough to provoke both laughter and mystery. In Contract Null & Void, he offers up Daniel Kearney, who runs an outfit that provides experts at "tracing skips, repo'ing cars, finding embezzlers and serving subpoenas"; the brilliant Giselle, who is confined to a mansion in Marin County where she is charged with protecting a dimwitted computer genius whose life is in danger; and Larry Ballard, who has found himself in the midst of "something big and rotten" in a union local at a San Francisco hotel.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Just another month, the first since 32 Cadillacs (1992), for the repo specialists of Daniel Kearny Associates. Larry Ballard is looking for barman Danny Marenne, a union exec whose life expectancy has plummeted with the shooting of Local 3 president Georgi Petlaroc. He's also getting come-ons, finally, from more women than he can handle. (Too bad his boss, tossed out by Mrs. Kearny, has decided to crash in his apartment.) Trin Morales, meanwhile, takes time out from blackmailing underage Chicanas into bed to break into a plush mansion, then finds himself deep in the pocket of assemblyman Rick Kiely. Patrick Michael O'Bannon starts out by chasing some hot tires, then ends up taking away every stick of a mild guitarist's furniture, and the guitar too. Giselle Marc and Ken Warren hunker down to keep computer nerd Paul Rochemont alive till he can sign a half-billion-dollar contract that'll eliminate the motive for his partner, Frank Nugent, to kill him, and transfer the motive to the wife his mother so disapproves of. And Bart Heslip, supposedly on vacation in Detroit, is working undercover in the Tenderloin, two steps ahead of the cops who want to know more about why he punched out Danny Marenne. There's more--much, much more--all of it purring along in Gores's patented procedural overdrive, like Ed McBain on uppers. Miraculously, the DKA staff eventually manages to tie some of these deliriously overgalvanized cases in to each other. Don't count on being able to do the same. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0892965924
• ISBN 13: 9780892965922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 309