Imprint
- Mulholland Books
Fiction, Crime & mystery
Available for the first time in ebook, Joseph Hansen's classic mystery series starring Dave Brandstetter, a gay private eye in 70s and 80s California.
'After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor' The Times
Dave Brandstetter stands alongside Philip Marlow, Sam Spade and Lew Archer as one of the best fictional PIs in the business. Like them, he was tough, determined, and ruthless when the case demanded it. Unlike them, he was gay.
Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking novels follow Brandstetter as he investigates cases in which motives are murky, passions run high, and nothing is ever as simple as it looks. Set in 1970s and 80s California, the series is a fascinating portrait of a time and a place, with mysteries to match Chandler and Macdonald.
Police Chief Ben Orton swore he'd keep 'big city vice' out of his town. So no one is too surprised when he turns up dead - but Dave thinks pinning his murder on gay activist Cliff Kerlee is just a bit too convenient. His investigation uncovers a community cowed by one man, and a police force with its own ideas of law and order.
Praise for The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of: Dave Brandstetter Investigation 4
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The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today - LA Times
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Hansen, one of the best practitioners of the California private-eye school...writes crisply with a lean, spare prose that echoes Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald - Washington Post
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In Brandstetter, Hansen has developed a sympathetic character of depth and integrity - Chicago Sun-Times
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No mystery writer is better at evoking the landscape, the light, the architecture and the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles - Time
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Hansen is a strong unflinching writer and everything in his taut prose is real - Boston Globe
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An exceptionally urbane literary style - New York Times Book Review
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Hansen writes about Southern California with the descriptive love once given it by Raymond Chandler - Herald Examiner
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An excellent craftsman, a compelling writer, he has a real gift for storytelling - for character, for scene, for pace independent of violence - New Yorker
Joseph Hansen
Joseph Hansen wrote nearly forty novels in the course of a long career, but is best known for the groundbreaking series of twelve Dave Brandstetter crime novels. Brandstetter was a pioneering character: a tough private eye and happily uncloseted gay man. Hansen was an active campaigner for equal rights (though he disliked the word 'gay' and always described himself as 'homosexual'). He founded the pioneering gay journal Tangents in 1965, hosted a radio show called Homosexuality Today, and was involved in setting up the first Gay Pride parade in Hollywood in 1970, the same year that the first Brandstetter novel was published. In 1992, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. He died in 2004.
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