Dead Man

by Joe Gores

Swept away from his loving family when his computer investigations make him the target of a mysterious enemy, Eddie Dain resurfaces as a trained killer with deadly instincts and a drive for revenge. Reprint.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime

262 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Joe Gores (1931-2011) was the author of the acclaimed DKA series of street-level crime and detection, as well as the stunning suspense novels Dead Man and Menaced Assassin.

He served in the U.S. Army - writing biographies of generals at the Pentagon - was educated at the University of Notre Dame and Stanford, and spent twelve years as a San Francisco private investigator. The author of dozens of novels, screenplays, and television scripts, he won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and Japan's Maltese Falcon Award.

Reviews

[Dollie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was certain different. It was very violent, with graphic descriptions. I always hate it when a child, especially a young one, gets killed in a book, but I must admit, it certainly makes for a good excuse for revenge in a story. I liked the lead character, Eddie Dain, a lot. I liked the fact that the book was dedicated to a former family pet of the author, Shenzie, who was also immortalized by being written in as a character in the book. I remember every cat I’ve ever had and even some of my grandmother’s cats from when I was little (they were always named Momma Cat - easy to remember). Anyway, this story was fast paced with some excellent twists. I love it when I can’t figure out who did it and I didn’t know who did this until I read it at the end of the book - and I NEVER read the end of the book first. Also, what was kind of different for me about this book was that Dain wasn’t an FBI agent or a big city cop. He was just an investigator trying to provide for his family who liked to play chess. Good story.

[Diarmuid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Gores was a very good writer of crime and thriller fiction who was not as well known as he should have been. It's a shame because his work is good enough to compare with some of the greats of crime writing.

Dead Man is a very well written revenge thriller. It has a gritty 70's feel to it even though it was one of his later books, written in the 90's. Some of the writing and descriptions remind me of James Lee Burke. Other times there's a savagery to the prose (and in the action in the book) that reminds me of Boston Teran.

Highly recommended.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found this in a used bookstore. It was suspenseful and tied together neatly, though the twists were pretty obvious. A fine beach or airplane read if you don't want to think too hard. The starting premise was more promising and seemed to suggest the book would be more clever than it turned out to be... Oh well.

[Claudia Brogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this author! He creates a world that you just enter and get absorbed in. His characters are intriguing, and I always feel refreshed and thoughtful after finishing one of his books

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1995. Eddie Dain is a private investigator who is good at finding people who don't want to be found.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the cheeriest of scenarios, family death, a man hits bottom, slowly recovers, kills those responsible, and finds a new woman! You never know who did it till the end!

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eddie Dain is just unlucky, when he's discovered investigating what appears to be a murder but has been deemed an accidental death, he along with his wife and child fall victim to a silencing scheme. Fortunately Eddie survives and devotes his life to finding the unfindable, while keeping his eyes open for the man who hired his family's murderers.

Fast paced story with lots of twists, took me the whole book to be sure.

[Michael Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got hooked years ago on Gores’s DKA novels, about a firm of San Francisco skip-tracers and repo men. He’s pretty much quit writing those -- possibly because almost anyone these days with access to the Internet can do skip-trace. This one is about Eddie Dain, a tall, skinny Cal Tech grad and computer genius (by 1993 standards) who, for some unexplained reason, goes into private investigation instead of heading for Silicon Valley. He treats it all as a game, him and his hacker skills against the rest of the world -- until his reluctance to drop a case results in his adored wife and small son being shotgunned to death, with Dain in the hospital for a year. Not surprisingly, he’s a different man when he comes out. He wants revenge. And he’s no longer skinny. But despite himself, even vengeance becomes a game in which he presents a face to the world that isn’t really him. And as he goes on, he begins to question the point of it all. And he begins to realize, with the help of a new semi-love interest, that his wife wouldn’t have wanted to be converted into an icon. The plot has some problems early on -- it’s kind of hard to believe in Dain’s motivations -- but the pace picks up nicely.

I had problems, though, when the action moved to New Orleans and then to the back country of the Atchafalaya (which is less than thirty miles from me). He describes highway routes that don’t exist -- couldn’t geographically exist -- and he lays on the Cajun-ness waaaaaaaay too thick. Even in 1993, it hadn’t been like that for some time, not among the younger generation. Not outside of a Justin Wilson routine. So while it’s a pretty good story, the author really should have stuck to San Francisco.

[Ron Arden]

Eddie Dain is a computer genius who dabbles as an amateur detective in San Francisco. He and his wife run a computer business and he uses his computer skills to scientifically solve crimes. This all sounds wonderful, but I was waiting for the other shoe to drop in the story. It does when Eddie, his wife and son are all killed by hit men while enjoying a vacation getaway.

Well, Eddie survives and spends the next few years rehabilitating himself physically and mentally. Before the hit, he was 140 pounds and now he is a 200 pound, scary guy. He does some work for the mob in Las Vegas and decides he wants to get revenge for his family's deaths. He reminds me of the Ben Kingsley character in "Sneakers".

Eddie or Dain as he now calls himself, re-enters the detective business to seek out the killers. He is hired to recover $2M in stolen bonds for a brokerage firm in Chicago. This leads him to an exotic stripper named Vangie and her accomplice. Dain follows them to New Orleans, where shady cops, the Cajun Bayou and a host of characters moves the story along. The people who want their $2M back are now after Vangie and Dain. This leads to a lot of betrayals and dead people along the way. It culminates in a last stand between Dain & Vangie and those who want them dead. They survive and Dain eventually finds his family's killers, but the ending is quite a surprise.

The moral is to make sure you know who your friends really are.

[Mike Gowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good suspense.