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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISBN: 9781842431689
Price: £16.99
Casing: Paperback
Format: B (198 x 129mm)
Extent: 1200pp
Rights: UK & Commonwealth excl. Canada, Australia & New Zealand
Pub. Date: May 2007

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph Hansen wrote over twenty novels in total including the renowned series of twelve Dave Brandstetter P.I. novels. He passed away on 24th November 2004 following a long illness.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

All 12 Classic Dave Brandstetter mysteries in one volume

Joseph Hansen's highly successful mystery series which kicked off in 1970 with the publication of Fadeout, featured one of the genre's first openly homosexual investigators, Dave Brandstetter. Like other fictional sleuths, such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe or Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Hansen's middle-aged protagonist is tough, smart and self-assured. "My joke," Hansen said, "was to take the true hard-boiled character in the American fiction tradition and make him homosexual. He was going to be a nice man, a good man, and he was going to do his job well."

Hansen's series, which continued until 1991 with A Country Of Old Men, was set in an evocative 70's and 80's Southern California, particularly Los Angeles, for which he received high praise. The LA Times said Hansen had presented Brandstetter's "loves, jealousies and betrayals with both candour and discretion... and never-exploitive honesty". Throughout the course of the series Brandstetter ages physically and grows emotionally as he come to terms with the turmoil of his personal relationships.

Now all 12 Dave Brandstetter novels are brought together in one volume: The Complete Brandstetter.

Dave Brandstetter novels in order:

Fadeout

Death Claims

Troublemaker

The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of

Skinflick

Gravedigger

Nightwork

The Little Dog Laughed

Early Graves

Obedience

The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning

A Country of Old Men

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

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

"...After 40 years Hammett has a worthy successor..." - The Times

"...Spare and stylish..." - The Financial Times

"...The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today..." - Los Angeles 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