Customer Reviews

Final notice (A DKA file novel)

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This is the second book in the very enjoyable and entertaining DKA Files. DKA stands for Dan Kearny Associates and is a detective agency that specialises in car repossessions and tracking down skip-traces. Final Notice is full of clever cons and scams designed to gather the information required to track down their delinquent quarry.

When DKA agent Larry Ballard repossesses a Cadillac, he unwittingly also takes a comic book containing a number of $100 bills stuffed between the pages. In doing so he places the company in the middle of a mob pay-off. The bank that employed DKA to perform the repossession quickly order the caddy be returned to the former owner (an almost unheard of request) which DKA obediently do. It would have all ended there, but then a member of staff is savagely beaten by a known mob enforcer right outside the agency office. From this point on it becomes personal and Dan Kearny and his people become determined to find out what's going on and, perhaps get some revenge.

This book is a nice mix of interesting detective work couple with a likable group of individually unique characters making it a fresh detective story. There are plenty of action sequences to keep the entertainment level high as well as some light-hearted interaction between the DKA agents. As far as private investigator series go, I've found this to be one of the freshest and most enjoyable ones written in recent times.

Reading a DKA novel is like spending a few days shadowing a repo man to learn the ropes of the repossession business, except that it's more fun (and less dangerous). In a DKA novel, you know that you'll meet interesting characters, encounter plenty of action, and exercise your brain as you try to solve whatever puzzle Joe Gores has in store for you.

Final Notice takes place six months after Dead Skip. In that novel, Bart Heslip was hospitalized after being hit with a sap outside the DKA offices. Final Notice gets off to a similar start as Ed Dorsey is hospitalized after being beaten by two thugs outside the DKA offices. The beating seems to be tied to the repossession of a Cadillac belonging to an aging beauty named Chandra, whose delinquent payments are suddenly and mysteriously made good. Thanks to Heslip's intervention, one of the thugs who beat Dorsey is captured and identified as a mob henchman. DKA's founder, Dan Kearny, makes it his business to find out why Dorsey was beaten, and solves a couple of murders along the way.

The plot of Final Notice isn't quite as ingenious as that of Dead Skip, but it ties together nicely at the end. The pace is swift and the process of detection is fascinating. Characters come to life, particularly Giselle, a DKA employee whose ill-advised affair with a banker is a central focus of the story. Gores' prose is tight and suitably hard-boiled without becoming a parody. It's unfortunate this novel is out of print. Seek it out if you like first rate detective fiction.

This book was really hard to put. It's a shame that is no longer available. The writing is fast, excellent and intelligent. I really loved this book.

In FINAL NOTICE the reader knows who the bad guys are early on in the book. The big surprise is how Dan Kearny chooses to handle the situation. FINAL NOTICE is one of the better entries in the popular DKA series.