He was known best for his novels and short stories set in San Francisco and featuring the fictional Dan Kearney and Associates[1] (the "DKA Files") private investigation firm specializing in repossessing cars, a thinly veiled escalation of his own experiences as a confidential sleuth and repo man.

[3][4] Gores worked for 12 years as a private investigator for San Francisco's David Kikkert & Associates,[5] and put in other stints as a truck driver, logger, assistant motel manager and an English teacher at a boys' school in Kenya.

[7] Gores was a three-time Edgar Award winner, and only one of three authors (the other two being Donald E. Westlake and William L. DeAndrea) to receive Edgars in three separate categories; Gores won Best First Novel (for A Time of Predators (1969)—a story set in the San Francisco Bay Area and having to do with a Stanford University professor who re-learns his military commando skills in order to go after a gang of juvenile thugs who raped his wife), Best Short Story ("Goodbye, Pops," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Dec. 1969)[8] and Best TV Series Segment for writing an episode of the crime drama Kojak titled "No Immunity for Murder"—airdate Nov. 23, 1975.

The sequence is described from Parker's viewpoint in the 1972 book Plunder Squad, which Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark.

[15] This is a selection: EQMM = Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine; DKA = stories involving Dan Kearney and Associates The German audio-drama producer Ohrenkneifer released "South of Market" on CD in August 2014.