Contract Null & Void [Hardcover]

Joe Gores (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1996

The crew at the San Francisco detective firm, Daniel Kearny Associates, finds their lives are placed in jeopardy by an insidious plot designed to kill several labor union executives. By the author of 32 Cadillacs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 Publishers Weekly

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Pr (July 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892965924
• ISBN-13: 978-0892965922
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,414,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Master Near Rock Bottom, January 5, 2001

By 

William Wilson (Mill Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Contract Null and Void (Dka File Novel) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've always been a great fan of Joe Gores, and found this effort really painful because he's let his readers down.

Many authors use the technique of relating, in parallel, stories from the perspective of several people. The fun comes when these stories become intertwined, leading to a combined climax to the action. It seems at first that Gores is plotting this kind of action, but the reader gradually realizes that there is no interconnection between the stories except that they happen at the same time to different DKA operatives. In effect, what we have here is a half dozen short stories of varying quality spliced together. It doesn't hold together, and I was ultimately unsatisfied.

The individual components of the book range from an overly complex death threat, a bloody union scheme, surreal-comic reposessions, and a distasteful DKA op who gets his kicks taking sexual advantage of illegal alien girls.

Enjoy 32 Cadillacs or other earlier Gores works and pass on this one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too thin, September 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Contract Null and Void (Dka File Novel) (Mass Market Paperback)

Too disconnected. Gores flits here and there and everywhere never giving enough to string a story. It's like a day in the life of a repo man only it's a day in the life of ALL the repo men and women who work for DKA. Very boring and pointless. There wasn't enough local atmosphere or story to hold my attention.

And another thing that's beginning to grate on me after 20yrs of reading mysteries is ALL THE WOMEN ARE ALL flawless KNOCKOUT PERFECT...blond, blue eyed, boobies & brains and long legs. Ah..the guys are normal. I'm still going to try 32 Cadillacs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great mystery author with terrific character-smarts, March 11, 2002

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Contract Null & Void (Hardcover)

Joe Gores is one of the most entertaining mystery authors around, no argument. He can write really tough, noir stories, but my favorites have always been his "DKA" novels, featuring Daniel Kearny, king of the San Francisco repo men, and his crew of talented and slightly strange operatives: Larry Ballard, good-looking white-bread and black belt in assorted martial arts; Bart Heslip, black ex-boxer and Larry's best friend; Giselle Marc, beauty combined with brains and organizational smarts; O'Bannon, elder statesman of repo artists and inveterate lush; Ken Warren, Vietnam veteran with a serious speech impediment; and numerous others who come and go throughout the series. Gores's specialty is to combine this retinue of fascinating people with complex -- but reasonable and logical -- multiple plots, an eye for telling detail and description, and a droll style of delivery that will have you laughing out loud on the bus. This time, the overlapping plots include Bart going undercover in the Tenderloin District, Giselle talking Dan (who's been thrown out of his house by his wife) into taking on a personal security job for a young computer geek who is about to become a semi-billionaire, Ken becoming the sexual target of the geek's aging society mom, Jacques Daniel trying to uncover union corruption and being run off a Marin cliff on his racing bike, Trin Morales trying to balance his repo load with his desire to become both a Latino godfather and the bane of underage chicas, and Larry getting involved with a gorgeous, feisty Italian labor union official who just may be more than he can handle. And then there's the two cops who have been a team so long they're known as Rozenkrantz and Guildenstern, automatically dressing alike and keeping up an endless stream of off-color jokes and patter. The pace is fast and steady, and ten pages from the end of the book, you'll shake your head and wonder how Gores can ever bring all the threads to a conclusion. But he does, and very tidily, too. This would make a wonderful film!