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DKA File #2
Final Notice: A DKA File Novel
"First-class private eye fiction." — Chicago Tribune
An aging beauty's red Cadillac is repossessed by the bank but quickly returned, thanks to a comic book on its front seat stuffed with $500 in new bills. The repo agency, Dan Kearny Associates, has accidentally interfered with a mob payoff. When one of their agents suffers a savage beatdown by a pair of underworld goons, the DKA team is plunged into a dark mystery involving a former porn star, a blackmail scheme, and a series of murders.
Author Joe Gores was hailed by critic Anthony Boucher as "one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett." The three-time Edgar Award winner's firsthand experience as a detective adds a tough realism to Final Notice, the second book in his DKA File series. This new edition includes a bonus DKA short story by Gores, "File #10: The Maimed and the Halt."
"Tight, tense, beautifully plotted." — The New York Times
"Gores writes some of the hardest, smoothest, most lucid prose in the field." — The New York Times Book Review
An aging beauty's red Cadillac is repossessed by the bank but quickly returned, thanks to a comic book on its front seat stuffed with $500 in new bills. The repo agency, Dan Kearny Associates, has accidentally interfered with a mob payoff. When one of their agents suffers a savage beatdown by a pair of underworld goons, the DKA team is plunged into a dark mystery involving a former porn star, a blackmail scheme, and a series of murders.
Author Joe Gores was hailed by critic Anthony Boucher as "one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett." The three-time Edgar Award winner's firsthand experience as a detective adds a tough realism to Final Notice, the second book in his DKA File series. This new edition includes a bonus DKA short story by Gores, "File #10: The Maimed and the Halt."
"Tight, tense, beautifully plotted." — The New York Times
"Gores writes some of the hardest, smoothest, most lucid prose in the field." — The New York Times Book Review
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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54 people want to read
About the author
Joe Gores
80 books33 followersJoe 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 23, 2022
Final Notice is the second book in the DKA Files, it follows almost directly on from Dead Skip and continues a wonderfully entertaining series of hardboiled PI detective novels. In much the same way Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct books artfully depicted policing, the DKA Files books cover the private investigator role in the 1970s.
Lovers of the ins and outs of the subtle art of deception while tracking down petty crims will definitely get a kick out of this. 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.
The dedication, excitement and competition between agents is particularly emphasised in the course of the various jobs the agents perform as can be seen as Larry Ballard prepares to commandeer a repo’d Cadillac.
Coming down off the high of jumping in the car and simply taking off, Ballard is stunned to find a comic book sitting on the seat next him containing a number of $100 bills stuffed between the pages. By unwittingly taking the car plus money he places the company in the middle of a mob pay-off. The bank that employed DKA to perform the repossession quickly orders the Caddy be returned to the former owner which DKA obediently do.
It would have all ended there, but then a member of staff is savagely beaten and it becomes obvious the attacker is a hit man working for Padilla Trucking, a known mob front. It happened right outside the agency office and, even more disturbing, the true target was Kearney himself. 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 was written in the 1970s and comes across as very typical for the time. It’s a nice mix of interesting detective work coupled with a likable group of individually unique characters making it a fresh detective story. In fact, one of the stronger points of the book is the ensemble cast that makes up the agency. We get a complete picture of the assets of each of the DKA employees and the way they interact with each other. Gores does an outstanding job of bringing each and every one of them to life.
This is a hardboiled detective novel that contains plenty of action sequences to keep the entertainment level high with the mood occasionally lifted by some light-hearted interaction between the DKA agents. As far as private investigator series go, I've found this remains one of the freshest and most enjoyable I’ve read in recent times.
Lovers of the ins and outs of the subtle art of deception while tracking down petty crims will definitely get a kick out of this. 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.
The dedication, excitement and competition between agents is particularly emphasised in the course of the various jobs the agents perform as can be seen as Larry Ballard prepares to commandeer a repo’d Cadillac.
“This was it. That always intense excitement, almost pure joy, when you faced the moment of action. Get out hot wire and pop keys. Lock up the Plymouth. Walk casually, as casually as the hard-eyed man had walked. No need for window picks, since the top was down.”
Coming down off the high of jumping in the car and simply taking off, Ballard is stunned to find a comic book sitting on the seat next him containing a number of $100 bills stuffed between the pages. By unwittingly taking the car plus money he places the company in the middle of a mob pay-off. The bank that employed DKA to perform the repossession quickly orders the Caddy be returned to the former owner which DKA obediently do.
It would have all ended there, but then a member of staff is savagely beaten and it becomes obvious the attacker is a hit man working for Padilla Trucking, a known mob front. It happened right outside the agency office and, even more disturbing, the true target was Kearney himself. 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 was written in the 1970s and comes across as very typical for the time. It’s a nice mix of interesting detective work coupled with a likable group of individually unique characters making it a fresh detective story. In fact, one of the stronger points of the book is the ensemble cast that makes up the agency. We get a complete picture of the assets of each of the DKA employees and the way they interact with each other. Gores does an outstanding job of bringing each and every one of them to life.
This is a hardboiled detective novel that contains plenty of action sequences to keep the entertainment level high with the mood occasionally lifted by some light-hearted interaction between the DKA agents. As far as private investigator series go, I've found this remains one of the freshest and most enjoyable I’ve read in recent times.
March 18, 2015
FINAL NOTICE by Joe Gores . . .
The last book I reviewed was FINAL NOTICE by Jonathan Valin. The title is as far as the similarity goes. Valin’s Harry Stoner is a “lone wolf” private eye while Joe Gores writes about a group of organized company investigators, more like the commonly seen Pinkerton or Burns agency private cops. In this case they work for Dan Kearny Associates.
The story begins with one of Kearny’s operatives repossessing a snazzy Caddy convertible. The next important thing is when one of the more senior PIs gets tuned up seriously by a pair of mobbed-up hoods. As in any good mystery, much of what we see is not even close to what it really is. Then, toss in lots of character development with the regular employees of DKA so we get a better incite to their personalities and FINAL NOTICE was a pretty good 1970s PI story.
After the beating, the plot and solution gets pretty complicated. I like Gores’ imagination and how he writes his DKA File Novels as PI procedurals, much like Joe Wambaugh writes his LAPD police procedurals. Not so much in the case of FINAL NOTICE, but generally, there are various incidents common to the everyday life of real private investigators, car repossessions and some more mundane tasks, being in the majority, and how some of them all wrap up into a relative bundle and carry on into the final problem and solution.
The last book I reviewed was FINAL NOTICE by Jonathan Valin. The title is as far as the similarity goes. Valin’s Harry Stoner is a “lone wolf” private eye while Joe Gores writes about a group of organized company investigators, more like the commonly seen Pinkerton or Burns agency private cops. In this case they work for Dan Kearny Associates.
The story begins with one of Kearny’s operatives repossessing a snazzy Caddy convertible. The next important thing is when one of the more senior PIs gets tuned up seriously by a pair of mobbed-up hoods. As in any good mystery, much of what we see is not even close to what it really is. Then, toss in lots of character development with the regular employees of DKA so we get a better incite to their personalities and FINAL NOTICE was a pretty good 1970s PI story.
After the beating, the plot and solution gets pretty complicated. I like Gores’ imagination and how he writes his DKA File Novels as PI procedurals, much like Joe Wambaugh writes his LAPD police procedurals. Not so much in the case of FINAL NOTICE, but generally, there are various incidents common to the everyday life of real private investigators, car repossessions and some more mundane tasks, being in the majority, and how some of them all wrap up into a relative bundle and carry on into the final problem and solution.
May 11, 2019
Really solid PI story based again around Dan Kearney’s repo agency. There’s some fairly convoluted chicanery from the bad guys but it’s nothing our heroes can’t run done with some solid detecting and keen thinking.
There was a little too much racism and misogyny for today’s readers, but the plotting is solid and the pacing impressive.
There was a little too much racism and misogyny for today’s readers, but the plotting is solid and the pacing impressive.
November 3, 2019
This series has to be one of the better noir series fron the '70's. Gores lean and direct prose, is what it feels like reading a Hammett tale 40 years later.
January 17, 2019
3.5 stars, a good procedural and touring of the San Francisco Bay Area.
October 29, 2025
They should have made thousands of these.
February 10, 2020
An enjoyable read, shorter than the first DKA book.
These books are kind of a time capsule, taking you back to the early 70s with its cultural movements and attitudes. For those easily offended by language, be aware that there are some racist and sexist statements and words because this is meant to be a realistic book with real people using real language from the time.
Final Notice starts with a repossession, the primary work of the Dan Kearny Associates agency, and rapidly becomes a fight for the life of the agents against organized crime which, while it has no official presence in San Francisco still has its tentacles active there.
The mystery is incredibly complex, and yet not as satisfying as it ought to be, and while the personalities and characters are interesting, the story wasn't as effective this time around.
These books are kind of a time capsule, taking you back to the early 70s with its cultural movements and attitudes. For those easily offended by language, be aware that there are some racist and sexist statements and words because this is meant to be a realistic book with real people using real language from the time.
Final Notice starts with a repossession, the primary work of the Dan Kearny Associates agency, and rapidly becomes a fight for the life of the agents against organized crime which, while it has no official presence in San Francisco still has its tentacles active there.
The mystery is incredibly complex, and yet not as satisfying as it ought to be, and while the personalities and characters are interesting, the story wasn't as effective this time around.
February 23, 2011
Another interesting read about car repo in San Francisco.
June 2, 2015
Dobra, zabavna knjiga, da je uvid u život privatni istražitelja
April 8, 2017
Going to read the next book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews