Gone, No Forwarding

“I’m going to have your license, shamus!” The line is as familiar to television viewers and readers of detective fiction as the blonde in the bedroom or the bottle in the drawer. But when the State of California cold-bloodedly sets out to grab Dan Kearny’s license, the phrase is no longer a cliché. The “irregular” case upon which the state is building its suit was handled by Kathy Onoda. Now she is dead. As the disciplinary hearings before the State Bureau of Private Investigators proceed, Kearny’s central problem becomes: Who could have witnessed the events in the DKA Oakland office on a rainy Friday afternoon nearly a year before? Seven people. Kearny’s staff ranges the state and then the country in search of them, but they are mysteriously Gone, No Forwarding from their addresses. The search becomes desperate when Kearny’s detectives find other, deadly hunters dogging their footsteps. As Bart Heslip becomes enmeshed in the strange odyssey of a fugitive black girl, it becomes evident that her testimony, and hers alone, can unravel the intricate human puzzle at the core of the novel. Moving, often comic, always taut, Gone, No Forwarding is another intensely real picture of modern investigative techniques from Joe Gores, the writer Anthony Boucher called “one of the very few authentic private eyes to enter the field of fiction since Dashiell Hammett.” The author gives us break-neck action, sparkling characterizations, machine-gun dialogue and, as critic James Sandoe said, “He handles violence as a wise man handles nettles.”