Books in series
#1
Fadeout
1970
Fadeout is the first of Joseph Hansen's twelve classic mysteries featuring rugged Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is contentedly gay. When entertainer Fox Olson's car plunges off a bridge in a storm, a death claim is filed, but where is Olson's body? As Brandstetter questions family, fans, and detractors, he grows certain Olson is still alive and that Dave must find him before the would-be killer does. Suspenseful and wry, shrewd and deeply felt, Fadeout remains as fresh today as when it startled readers more than thirty years ago.
#2
Death Claims
1973
Death Claims is the second of Joseph Hansen's acclaimed mysteries featuring ruggedly masculine Dave Brandstetter, a gay insurance investigator. When John Oats' body is found washed up on a beach, his young lover April Stannard is sure it was no accident. Brandstetter Oats' college-age son, the beneficiary of the life insurance, has gone missing.
#3
Troublemaker
1975
Who killed gay bar owner and all-around nice guy Rick Wendell? Was it Larry Johns, the attractive young man found wiping his prints off the still-smoking gun mere moments after the murder? If so, why was Johns naked? And what happened to the large sum of money Wendell had just withdrawn from the bar's bank account? Hard-boiled, openly gay insurance claims investigator Dave Brandstetter aims to find out in Troublemaker, the third volume in Joseph Hansen's legendary and critically acclaimed Brandstetter mystery series.
#4
The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of
1978
Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter nettles the cops and the victim's widow and comes upon all kinds of loose ends when he looks into the murder of Police Chief Ben Orton, a murder for which a gay activist has been arrested
#5
Skinflick
1979
A new crime novel featuring insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter, who finds too many loose ends to tie up when he investigates a murder. The investigation takes him from an evangelical church to the seedy world of teenage drugs and prostitution.
#6
Gravedigger
1982
Charles Westover, a disbarred lawyer, alleges that his runaway teenage daughter has been murdered and he files an insurance claim. And then he disappears, leaving claims investigator, Dave Brandstetter to sort through the pieces of the puzzle. Young women have been murdered by the crazed guru of a bizarre sex cult - is this what happened to Serenity Westover?
Brandstetter's investigation, set against vivid Californian backgrounds of expensive seaside suburbs and snowy mountain camps, desert towns and wilderness canyons, takes him on a quest of mounting tensions and ultimate horror. Never has he needed his renowned shrewdness and compassion more. And never has he faced so close a brush with a grisly death.
#7
Nightwork
1984
A widely published travel writer provides a comprehensive listing of available package tour options, describing tour operators and their offerings and presents guidance in judging and selecting package tours
#8
The Little Dog Laughed
1986
Celebrated foreign correspondent Adam Streeter is found shot dead in his elegant LA condo. The cops say suicide, but the company that insured his life thinks otherwise and sends in crack death-claims investigator Dave Brandstetter. As he pushes deeper into the case, he unearths three more deaths seemingly linked to Streeter's. Little by little, Brandstetter narrows the hunt for the killer - only to find he himself has become the hunted, his enemy more powerful and ruthless than any he has faced before.
#9
Early Graves
1987
The 9th novel in the Dave Brandstetter PI series, Dave Brandstetter, is called upon to track down a serial killer operating in and around Los Angeles who has been killing gay men who have AIDS. 'The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today' -LA Times 'After 40 years, Hammet has a worthy successor' - The Times '...a strong unflinching writer and everything in his taut prose is real' - Boston Globe
#10
Obedience
1988
In this tenth novel in Joseph Hansen's acclaimed Dave Brandstetter detective series, Dave ventures into Los Angeles' Vietnamese subculture to prevent an innocent man from taking a murder rap. First-rate.—Time.
#11
The Boy Who Was Buried this Morning
1990
Author Joseph Hansen and his fictional sleuth Dave Brandstetter are both brand-name commodities in the mystery and gay fiction genres. In this 11th novel featuring the gay detective, Brandsetetter is called out of semi-retirement to investigate the apparently accidental shotgun death of his lover's co-worker. What unfolds is a gripping tale of blackmail and murder set in a sleepy California town, where nothing is as innocent as it appears.
#12
A Country of Old Men
1991
After twenty-one years on the detective beat, aging veteran P.I. Dave Brandstetter is finally going to get some rest—that is, after one last case. Even though he is no longer able to sprint after the bad guys like he used to, Brandstetter is not stopped from investigating this wild tale of kidnapping and murder told by a bruised and grubby little boy found wandering the beach alone. The police don't even believe the kid—just as they don't believe that the drug-related shooting death of a pop guitarist in anything out of the ordinary. So Dave is lured out of retirement to confront street drugs, powerful politicians, sleazy record executives, child abuse.and to unravel as snarled a tangle of carnage and deception as he's ever faced.
Author
Joseph Hansen
Author · 22 books
Joseph Hansen (1923–2004) was an American author of mysteries. The son of a South Dakota shoemaker, he moved to a California citrus farm with his family in 1936. He began publishing poetry in the New Yorker in the 1950s, and joined the editorial teams of gay magazines ONE and Tangents in the 1960s. Using the pseudonyms Rose Brock and James Colton, Hansen published five novels and a collection of short stories before the appearance of Fadeout (1970), the first novel published under his own name. The book introduced street-smart insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter, a complex, openly gay hero who grew and changed over the series’s twelve novels. By the time Hansen concluded the series with A Country of Old Men (1990), Brandstetter was older, melancholy, and ready for retirement. The 1992 recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Hansen published several more novels before his death in 2004. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
