CONTRACT NULL AND VOID

Just another month, the first since 32 Cadillacs (1992), for the repo specialists of Daniel Kearny Associates. Larry Ballard is looking for barman Danny Marenne, a union exec whose life expectancy has plummeted with the shooting of Local 3 president Georgi Petlaroc. He's also getting come-ons, finally, from more women than he can handle. (Too bad his boss, tossed out by Mrs. Kearny, has decided to crash in his apartment.) Trin Morales, meanwhile, takes time out from blackmailing underage Chicanas into bed to break into a plush mansion, then finds himself deep in the pocket of assemblyman Rick Kiely. Patrick Michael O'Bannon starts out by chasing some hot tires, then ends up taking away every stick of a mild guitarist's furniture, and the guitar too. Giselle Marc and Ken Warren hunker down to keep computer nerd Paul Rochemont alive till he can sign a half-billion-dollar contract that'll eliminate the motive for his partner, Frank Nugent, to kill him, and transfer the motive to the wife his mother so disapproves of. And Bart Heslip, supposedly on vacation in Detroit, is working undercover in the Tenderloin, two steps ahead of the cops who want to know more about why he punched out Danny Marenne. There's more—much, much more—all of it purring along in Gores's patented procedural overdrive, like Ed McBain on uppers. Miraculously, the DKA staff eventually manages to tie some of these deliriously overgalvanized cases in to each other. Don't count on being able to do the same.