Anyone who is unfamiliar with Joseph Hansen’s books is missing-out on one of the great writers of recent popular fiction. His early works throughout the 1960s (sporting titles such as Known Homosexual) were of competent construction, though they rarely ventured beyond the gay ghetto of publishing’s lower echelon.

In 1967, Hansen had his agent shop-around a new book to the usual gang of publishing prospects. In this offering, he shunned the boilerplate soft-core porn trappings of the genre; substituting instead a tight, well-paced storyline possessing an efficient, shorthand-style descriptive flow that essentially became his cross-over piece. Editor’s reactions ranged from “too good” for their list to “deserves better”*. Three years later Harper and Row made Fadeout the first novel with a principal gay protagonist to be published for a mainstream audience.

Fadeout featured the sometimes daring exploits of Dave Brandstetter, Death Claims Investigator for the Medallion Life Insurance Company. While this first book found enough of an audience to propel it to paperback, the 1973 publication of Death Claims made the fledgling series a success and a fan favorite. An additional ten Brandstetter hardcover books would follow, with at least two paperbound series reissues to date.

Joseph Hansen crafted the Brandstetter character with an eye toward a broad audience appeal. Dave is an everyman of sorts; a veteran of World War Two with a rugged and handsome exterior who works hard and plays fair. Like all of us, the complexity of his life has a way of interfering with his work and his pleasure. Dave’s homosexuality gets a low-key treatment from Hansen that augments the story - from a reflection of the recurring sub-plots to the characters he investigates. Brandstetter is the best at his job because he is adept at reading the intricacies of people and events to his advantage.

Death Claims opens with an accidental drowning... or was foul play involved? John Oats was an excellent swimmer. A once handsome man who was badly scarred in a garage fire two years prior, his vanity leads him to swim at night from his ocean-view home. When his body is found smashed against the rocks beyond the beach come morning, the police rule it an accidental drowning. His recent attempt to change his life insurance beneficiary, though unfulfilled, raises a red flag at Medallion Life, which brings ace investigator Dave Brandstetter in on the case.

When Oates was first divorced, he made his son Peter heir to the policy. John’s lover April Stannard, an attractive girl almost thirty years his junior, nursed him through months of skin graft surgeries, while selling most of her possessions to help support the two. She must have been in John’s beneficiary line-of-succession, though it appears she was unaware of his intent.

And then there are the deceased’s business partners at a local bookstore - Charles Norwood and John’s ex-wife Eve - a high-strung woman who will only take a drink under extreme social pressure (which is always), with a version of events that comes with a trolley full of baggage. A ruling of accidental death can go a long way to lighten the police chief’s workload, but when Peter Oats confesses to his father’s murder, this proves to be one piece of the puzzle that just won’t fit.

As Dave’s analytical mind sifts through the available information, Hansen’s style involves the effective inclusion of ever-so-beautifully-nuanced and random scraps of information to up the ante while maintaining a taut level of suspense.

Hansen’s skills as a writer are evident throughout the Brandstetter series. The absence of gratuitous action and padding gives these books an accelerated and polished feel. The storylines are tight and deliciously intricate, with none of the coincidental insertions that plague the efforts of lesser writers.

Brandstetter’s southern California environs come alive with the author’s uniquely descriptive style. Whether sun-baked or rain-soaked, Hansen continuously uses his venue of choice to enhance a scene. His night locations are conceived with a fresh noir-ish take on the slick inky/bright neon style of the 1940's with none of the cliche or hackneyed gumshoe parlance found in the pulp novels of the period. His prose is spare and efficient; never flowery. As an example, the first paragraph of Chapter 3 leads Dave’s investigation to an old mill converted to a small community theater:

“The waterwheel was twice a man’s height, wider than a man’s two stretched arms. The timbers, braced and bolted with rusty iron were heavy, hand-hewn, swollen with a century of wet. Moss bearded the paddles, which dripped as they rose. The sounds were good. Wooden stutter like children running down a hall at the end of school. Grudging axle thud like the heartbeat of a strong old man”.

Joseph Hansen is one of my favorite contemporary authors - my go-to guy when I desire a refresher course on how a great mystery can be written. Aside from some dated monetary information (such as a $20,000 life insurance policy as motive for murder), these books are timeless in their structure and effect. Come for the story - come back again for the proficient, poetic style that is the legacy of Joseph Hansen.

*Source: Preface from Fadeout by Joseph Hansen.
Copyright 2004 The University of Wisconsin Press

Books in the Dave Brandstetter series
by Joseph Hansen:

Fadeout
Death Claims
Troublemaker
The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of
Skinflick
Gravedigger
Backtrack
Nightwork
Early Graves
Obedience
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning
A Country Of Old Men

This is an entry in the jps246 2007 Gay Pride Write-Off.

Thanks, Jeff!


Recommended: Yes