Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press
Pages: 187
Dave Brandstetter is an insurance company investigator in
charge of looking into difficult claims. When radio personality Fox Olson’s convertible
plunges off a mountain road into a river, Brandstetter is called in to
determine why nobody can find the body. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? Or
is Fox alive and in hiding? And how does all this relate to the sudden
reappearance of Olson’s war buddy.
Brandstetter has his own demons to fight. He has recently
lost his lover, and this is his first case after coming back onto the job after
a number of months off to get over what he can’t get over.
Olson lived in a small western town, one where everyone
seemed to love him, and also where everyone has secrets. Brandstetter must
expose all those secrets in order to uncover the truth and solve the case.
In 1972 Joseph Hansen published the first of what would grow
to twenty-five novels, twelve of which feature Dave Brandstetter as the hard
edged, openly gay, thinking man’s investigator. Brandstetter was not the first
gay sleuth, but he was the first healthy, gay detective that was utterly
comfortable with his sexuality. He is as real a person as a novel character can
be.
The writing and pacing are superb. Hansen has been compared
to Hammett, Ross MacDonald, and Chandler, and for good reasons. Although there
are some plot twists that are obvious, there are plenty of surprises that keep
the reader guessing to the last few pages.
It is a moving, interesting, sure-handed book on every
level.
After four decades, every aspect of this story and the
writing holds up. Hansen’s work is destined to be deemed classic. This is a
story I can highly recommend to all readers who enjoy a good mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment