Joseph Hansen's highly successful mystery series which kicked off in 1970 with the publication of Fadeout, featured one of the genre's first openly homosexual investigators, Dave Brandstetter. Like other fictional sleuths, such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe or Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Hansen's middle-aged protagonist is tough, smart and self-assured. "My joke," Hansen said, "was to take the true hard-boiled character in the American fiction tradition and make him homosexual. He was going to be a nice man, a good man, and he was going to do his job well."
Hansen's series, which continued until 1991 with A Country Of Old Men, was set in an evocative 70's and 80's Southern California, particularly Los Angeles, for which he received high praise. The LA Times said Hansen had presented Brandstetter's "loves, jealousies and betrayals with both candour and discretion... and never-exploitive honesty". Throughout the course of the series Brandstetter ages physically and grows emotionally as he come to terms with the turmoil of his personal relationships.
Now all 12 Dave Brandstetter novels are brought together in one volume: The Complete Brandstetter.
Dave Brandstetter novels in order:
Fadeout
Death Claims
Troublemaker
The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of
Skinflick
Gravedigger
Nightwork
The Little Dog Laughed
Early Graves
Obedience
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning
A Country of Old Men
