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.
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.
Every superlative thrown at Gores's previous DKA outing, 32 Cadillacs, applies here too, as Gores moves closer to setting up a subgenre all his own: the multilayered, serio-comic repo/skip-tracing procedural. As usual at the end of the month, San Francisco's Dan Kearny Associates is clearing the decks, closing up the tougher repo cases and generally taking a more liberal attitude toward the acquiring of paying gigs. Dan himself is sleeping on a colleague's couch after a dispute with his long-suffering wife. DKA operatives are cruising the boonies, seizing truck tires, a heavy metal band's equipment and a tired old bluesman's few possessions. The DKA office cleaner is singing the blues in a Tenderloin bar, where another operative is bartending incognito. A computer nerd with a Bogart fixation is about to get very wealthy, and his well-preserved mother and ditzy wife are tossing come-hither looks at more than one DK associate. If there's a central plot here, it would involve a near-dead cyclist, a labor dispute with hotel workers and two dead guys, one a labor leader and the other a powerful politician. Gores loads his tale to the bursting point, keeping it all together with bouts of scabrous humor, odd moments of tenderness and virtuoso narrative juggling. After allowing his trusting readers to meander through a series of minor movements, Gores jerks in the reins and dashes for the finish, a crafty collision of weird people that brings the main gambit into crystalline focus.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The lunatic repo men of Daniel Kearny Associates (32 Cadillacs, LJ 1/93) scour the streets of San Francisco for luxury cars and electric guitars. When a flamboyant union leader is murdered, their searches lead them into corrupt backwaters. Gores serves up wit, crisp prose, and California environs.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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