ABOUT THE BOOK

Gerald Dawson was an angry little man, a fundamentalist, a family man, who set out to change the world he feared and hated. He ended up murdered. The police are sure the killer is the owner of a Hollywood porno shop Dawson and his zealous cohorts had trashed. But crack insurance investigator Dave Bradstetter finds too many loose ends. Who was the runaway teenager sen with Dawson at a Sunset Strip disco? What was Dawson's connection with the porno filmmaker? Why are Dawson's widow and son so frightened?

Dave's investigation takes him from an evangelical church to a pornographic film studio, from the sunlit world of sleek cabin-cruisers to the neon nightmare of teenage drugs and prostitution. But the answers wait far away in a windswept midnight mountain wilderness, where Dave Brandstetter's life comes dramatically close to a mad and savage end.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"The Brandstetter stories develop strongly with a striking quality of measured calm" - London Sunday Times

"After 40 years Hammett has a worthy successor" - London Times

'Unusual in two respects. One is that the insurance investigator, though ruggedly masculine, is thoroughly and contentedly homosexual. the other is that Hansen is an excellent craftsmen, a compelling writer.' - New Yorker

'The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today.' - L.A.Times

'Spare and stylish' - London Financial Times

'Hansen is to gay detective fiction what Sara Paretsky is to feminist sleuthing.' - Pink Paper