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The Dave Brandstetter Series by Joseph Hansen |
Reviewer: Colin Dunne
Note: This section will contain individual reviews of all the Dave Brandstetter books and will be added to as time goes on. The series is being reprinted by Alyson Publications.
· Death Claims (1973)
· Troublemaker (1975)
· The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (1978)
· Skinflick (1980)
· Gravedigger (1982)
· Nightwork (1984)
· The Little Dog Laughed (1986)
· Early Graves (1987)
· Obedience (1988)
· The Boy Who Was Buried Yesterday (1990)
· The Country of Old Men (1991)
In 1970, writer Joseph Hansen introduced Medallion Life insurance claims investigator David Brandstetter, a PI of the classic mold with one notable exception: Dave was gay. Brandstetter was not the first gay detective but he was the first healthy, "normal" gay detective. He was handsome, tough but sensitive (naturally, right?) He could handle himself in a fight and he could cook. Smart, unsentimental but compassionate, straight in every way that counted, Brandstetter usually got his man.
Besides providing a positive homosexual role model, Hansen's twelve book series is remarkable for setting the gold standard against which all subsequent "gay mystery" series‚ would be set. Hansen, who earned the 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, is a tough act to follow. Two things characterize these mystery novels: tightly constructed plots and a clean, cool, classic style built to endure. These are more than crime novels with a gimmick.
In the first book of the series (a series which spanned 21 years), Korean War vet Brandstetter investigates the apparent death of folk singer Fox Olson, whose white convertible has been found wrecked in an arroyo minus Olson. Where's the body? Is the accident an accident? Did Olson commit suicide? Was he murdered? Or is Olson alive and faking his death? And how does all this relate to the sudden reappearance of Doug Sawyer, Olson's boyhood friend--who uncannily resembles Brandstetter's dead lover.
Though the medium is words, Hansen is a kind of Impressionist painter. In deceptively simple language he paints the history of Dave, a Korean War vet still grieving the death of his long time lover, Rod Fleming. Rod, though dead when FADEOUT begins, is more vividly alive than half the characters currently winning Lambdas. Briefly, Hansen describes the first meeting between Dave and Rod some years before, and in delicate, clever strokes sketches their life together.
bed, both of them with the smell of paint in their hair that no amount of
showering would take out, listening to the church bells off across the
rainy midnight city, he understood he had been wrong. No, it hadn't gone
on long yet. Only two weeks. But he knew, they both knew it was forever."
Some things are forever. One hopes that the Hansen books, now being reprinted through Alyson Publications, will be one of them.
"Arena Blanca was right. The sand that bracketed the little bay was so white it hurt the eyes. A scatter of old frame houses edged the sand, narrow, high-shouldered, flat-roofed. It didn't help that they were gay with new paintyellow, blue, lavender. They looked bleak in the winter sun. Above them gulls sheared a sky cheerful as new denim. The bay glinted like new tile. The small craft at anchor might have been dabbed there by Raoul Dufy. It was still bleak. So were the rain-greened hills that shut the place off. He drove down out of them bleakly."
Book two in Hansen's landmark series finds Brandstetter, a claims investigator for Medallion Life Insurance, checking into bookseller John Oats' "death by misadventure." The misadventure was a drowning that took place at night in the Pacific ocean. Hmm. During a rainstorm? After Oats changed his insurance policy so that his son Peter wouldn't inherit? Yeah, it's a little suspicious, and it doesn't help that Peter is now missing.
DEATH CLAIMS is one of my favorites in a series that was considered ground-breaking in its time, and still shines beneath the patina of age. From the opening line, Hansen never lets go, never wanders off track through an unexpectedly twisty tale of betrayal and murder. Of course Hansen was already an experienced novelist when he launched the Brandstetter series which partly explains his steady hand on the helm of the plot, and his incisive eye for the details that count. You simply can't discuss Hansen's writing without discussing style, but Hansen is that rarity, a brilliant stylist who actually has something to say.
"As he climbed the steep stairs to the street, a mockingbird in one of the shaggy pepper trees spilled song, spilled joy. His hand on the gate at the top, Dave glanced back down. Ingalls stood on the porch edge, peering up, but not at him. He was trying to locate the bird. He looked as if the sound gave him pain."
Another interesting point is that Hansen was weaving details about his protagonist's personal life into the genre novel's fiber long before it became de rigueur. Part of this is no doubt due to Hansen's socio-political agenda: Dave Brandstetter is gay and his sexuality is fundamental to this series. Through the course of the novels we grow to know and like Brandstetter. The sex of who he sleeps with becomes moot. Yet, Dave's sexuality is no gimmick. It's intrinsic to his character.
"Doug held a glass out to Dave, hurt in the shiny stone eyes. 'Most of all I thought how gentle you are. But you‚re not gentle, are you?''Ruthless.' Dave set the glass down, rummaged a spatula from a drawer. 'It's a habit of mind you get into when your job is to find the truth and not accept substitutes.'
Doug said, 'What is the truth?'
'In this case?' Dave carefully turned the eggs. 'I am.' "
In DEATH CLAIMS Brandstetter struggles to make his relationship with Doug work. The compromises are real and moving. The claims of the dead, of resolving the past and learning to live again, are a powerful theme in this second book, making it one of the most memorable in this influential series.
