Title: Fadeout (#1 in the Dave Brandstetter series) Author: Joseph Hansen Published by: Harper & Row, 1970 ISBN: [hardcover, 187 pages]
It was a situation insurance companies call specific peril. Folk singer Fox Olson's white convertible had been found smashed in an arroyo. It looked as if, on a night of storm, he had missed a narrow, wooden bridge and had plunged to his death.But where was his body?
His wife, daughter, and son-in-law insisted it would be found when the storm ended. But insurance claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doubted it. It looked to him as if Olson had chosen to disappear.
Why? After years of failure, success had just come to him. He had all a man could want and more was on its way. Why would he walk off and leave it all?
Doggedly, Dave sought answers, and found: a relationship between Olson's wife and his manager too warm to call friendship; the sudden return after twenty-odd years of a man who had been Olson's boyhood friend; a mayoralty campaign begun as a radio gag that promised to put Olson in control of a town that had too long been one man's private domain.
What Dave couldn't find was Fox Olson himself.
Dave was a good death-claims man. But he hadn't much heart for his case. The man who was his lover had just died of cancer, and with Rod gone, Dave had to fight a grieving sense of emptiness.
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