Joe Gores

Joe Gores (1931–2011) won Edgar Awards in three separate categories: Best First Novel, Best Short Story, and Best TV Series Segment. His many day jobs included truck driver, bodybuilding instructor, carny, and English teacher at a boys' school in Kenya as well as a dozen years as a private investigator in the San Francisco area. His work repossessing cars provided grist for the mill of his DKA series, making them — in the words of Ellery Queen — "[as] authentic as a fist in your face." Critics have compared Gores to Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Erle Stanley Gardner — and to Dashiell Hammett.