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dantastic's review
4.0
When repo man Bart Heslip is found in a coma in a wrecked, repossessed Jaguar, his college, former cop Larry Ballard, can't shake the idea that someone staged the accident to cover something up. Armed with only his wits and Heslip's last two days worth of cases, Ballard goes up against a three day deadline to find a would-be killer.
I initially bought this because I knew it was a crossver with Richard Stark's The Plunder Squad. It proved to be a pretty read all on its own.
Dead Skip reads like an episode of The Wire if The Wire was about a bunch of private detectives working for Dan Kearny and Associates, a repo agency. Ballard runs all over San Fransciso and surrounding areas, running down any lead he can find, looking for the man who put Bart Heslip in a coma. Needless to say, it boils down to legwork and talking to people, not booze and broads.
The case was serpentine in its complexity and not easily solveable. The dead leads outnumbered the useful ones by 12 to 1. By the time Ballard finally got on the trail, I was as worn out as he was.
Kearny and Ballard were both fairly well drawn characters for a book of this type from the era when it was written. Kearny doggedly looking for his man reminded me of Matthew Scudder a bit. Kearny could have easily been a world-weary police chief in another life.
The crossover with Parker made me want to reread all the Richard Stark novels. Speaking of Stark, the writing reminded me of Ed McBain collaborating with Richard Stark, despite both of them being pseudonyms and not actual people.
Dead Skip was a fun read and not just because of the Parker crossover. I'll be looking for the subsequent DKA books. Four out of five stars.
I initially bought this because I knew it was a crossver with Richard Stark's The Plunder Squad. It proved to be a pretty read all on its own.
Dead Skip reads like an episode of The Wire if The Wire was about a bunch of private detectives working for Dan Kearny and Associates, a repo agency. Ballard runs all over San Fransciso and surrounding areas, running down any lead he can find, looking for the man who put Bart Heslip in a coma. Needless to say, it boils down to legwork and talking to people, not booze and broads.
The case was serpentine in its complexity and not easily solveable. The dead leads outnumbered the useful ones by 12 to 1. By the time Ballard finally got on the trail, I was as worn out as he was.
Kearny and Ballard were both fairly well drawn characters for a book of this type from the era when it was written. Kearny doggedly looking for his man reminded me of Matthew Scudder a bit. Kearny could have easily been a world-weary police chief in another life.
The crossover with Parker made me want to reread all the Richard Stark novels. Speaking of Stark, the writing reminded me of Ed McBain collaborating with Richard Stark, despite both of them being pseudonyms and not actual people.
Dead Skip was a fun read and not just because of the Parker crossover. I'll be looking for the subsequent DKA books. Four out of five stars.
msand3's review
2.0
1.5 stars. Dead boring. I read this only because it shared a chapter with the Parker novel [b:Plunder Squad|596673|Plunder Squad (Parker, #15)|Richard Stark|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382387489l/596673._SY75_.jpg|3830]. And that chapter is the only interesting thing in this novel. It’s exactly as advertised: the very same incident from the perspective of Kearny rather than Parker. The rest of the novel is a dull detective procedural involving a repo firm investigating an employee’s assault. I felt no compelling interest in the crime, the characters, the plot, or the investigation beyond the brief connection with the world of Parker in one chapter.
psteve's review
3.0
Just read this book again, after turning it up for a quarter at the library sale. It was well worth the quarter & well worth the re-read. It's a DKA novel -- Daniel Kearney Associates -- wherein one of their agents is assaulted and left for dead in the middle of the night. This is the story of the rest of the crew trying to find out what happened.
Several things make this a really interesting read in 2011. First, it's a non-romantic portrait of the city at the time. Gores' locations are really there, and are not their for any purpose except to show where things happened. He isn't commenting on anything but the action, and this way he seems to me to show a very good portrait of the city.
The book, in its detail of a relatively boring type of detective work -- repossessing cars -- also isn't romanticized, but shows what seems to be a real way of working. Interesting to think of how the world has changed since 1972, and how this work must have changed. No computers, no cell phones. Young people reading this today must be confused at all the talk of carbon copies and the like.
But what makes the book worth reading is the low-key characterizations of the DKA crew and the portrait of the city.
Several things make this a really interesting read in 2011. First, it's a non-romantic portrait of the city at the time. Gores' locations are really there, and are not their for any purpose except to show where things happened. He isn't commenting on anything but the action, and this way he seems to me to show a very good portrait of the city.
The book, in its detail of a relatively boring type of detective work -- repossessing cars -- also isn't romanticized, but shows what seems to be a real way of working. Interesting to think of how the world has changed since 1972, and how this work must have changed. No computers, no cell phones. Young people reading this today must be confused at all the talk of carbon copies and the like.
But what makes the book worth reading is the low-key characterizations of the DKA crew and the portrait of the city.
guiltyfeat's review
3.0
Nice 70s noir with repo men chasing around San Francisco to find out why one of their colleagues was beaten into a coma. Not content with merely name-dropping Richard Stark early on, the book goes on to feature a whole scene with Parker in it, which may be an exact reflection of the same scene in Plunder Squad, but I can't be bothered to dig it out and check. If I find more of these old-time paperbacks I might pick them up.
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