Dave Brandstetter

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 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 audiences more than thirty years ago.

Death Claims is the second in Joseph Hansen's acclaimed mystery series featuring the 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 agrees: Oats' college-age son, the beneficiary of the life insurance policy, has gone missing.

Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking investigator Dave Brandstetter delves into the suspicious death of a gay entrepreneur. Rick Wendell's ranch is far from town. A remote, dusty hideaway, its only inhabitants are Rick, his aging mother, and her horses. One night, Rick's mother returns from the movies to find Rick lying on the floor, stark naked and with a gaping bullet wound in his chest. Standing over him is his lover, a mustachioed hippie, who swears he did not fire the gun that he's holding. The case seems open-and-shut, but Dave Brandstetter is not satisfied. An insurance investigator with an unusually keen sense of detection, Dave is openly gay and professionally skeptical. Something about the murder causes him to trust the alleged killer-and seriously doubt Rick's mother.

In the small town of La Caleta, Dave Brandstetter investigates the murder of a very unpopular cop. When Ben Orton's head is found bludgeoned by a heavy flower pot, the people of La Caleta are stunned-not because their police chief has been murdered, but because no one thought to do it sooner. A bruising, violent man, Ben had a commitment to order that did not always take the law into account. But as insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter is about to find out, the corruption in Ben's police force did not die with him. By the time Dave arrives in the fading fishing town, a young activist has already been arrested for the murder. Only Dave seems to care that the evidence against the accused is laughably thin. As the people of La Caleta try their best to thwart his investigation, Dave must do whatever it takes to catch Ben's killer.

Now working freelance, Dave Brandstetter digs into an evangelist's secret life. His father's death left Dave Brandstetter with a hole in his heart and an inheritance in his bank account. The money allowed him to venture out on his own, launching a freelance insurance investigation agency that specializes in suspicious deaths. His first case is potentially explosive, and if he isn't careful, it could be his last. Crusading evangelist Gerald Dawson believes that piety and violence go hand-in-hand. To clean up his local skid row, he has taken to vigilante justice, ransacking pornography shops and intimidating their owners. When Gerald is found with his neck snapped, the police finger smut peddler Lon Tooker for the crime, but Dave disagrees. As he digs into the holy man's nighttime activities, he finds a collection of sins that would make even the devil blush.

A runaway girl leads Dave Brandstetter to confront a California sex cult. Serenity ran away from home when her father was convicted of bribery. For two years, she drifted around the American Southwest, finally finding refuge in the arms of Azrael, a charismatic cult leader whose religion was founded upon blood. Long after Serenity's disappearance, the police find a mass grave containing six dead girls on Azrael's property. Thinking his daughter has been murdered, Serenity's father claims her life insurance, and promptly disappears. Now it's Dave Brandstetter's problem. An insurance investigator with a keen eye and a skeptical mind, Dave is no stranger to savagery. But his trip to the high-priced suburbs of Los Angeles will teach him something new about the depths of human cruelty-and Azrael's mass grave is only the beginning.

In a neighborhood plagued with violence, Dave Brandstetter uncovers a corporate crime. Gifford Gardens has gone to hell: persistent flooding has reduced the neighborhood to a slum, a battleground for rival gangs. Anyone who can afford to leave has already pulled up stakes, and Paul and Angela Myers are among those who are left. To make ends meet, Paul takes on long-haul truck driving, which is as dangerous as it is lucrative, and it's not long before the job gets him killed. One night, Paul's truck flies off a cliff and explodes in midair. Did he fall asleep at the wheel, or was he murdered? Keen-eyed insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter suspects a conspiracy. While digging into Paul's past, Dave will uncover a connection between his untimely death and the happier years of Gifford Gardens.

While investigating a suicide, Dave Brandstetter discovers a dead reporter's final scoop. Adam Streeter has covered international crises from Siberia to Cambodia. When disaster strikes, he grabs his battered typewriter and hops on a plane, hurling himself into danger wherever the story demands. He is brave, talented, and internationally renowned-so why would he turn a pistol on himself? Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has seen enough suicides to know that a journalist this successful would never take his own life. Suspecting treachery, he digs into Adam's last story-an unpublished investigation into the whereabouts of a vanished South American strongman, called El Carnicero, the Butcher-and Adam's death shows every hallmark of his bloody style. To finish Adam's investigation, Dave will have to make like a war correspondent and leap into the line of fire.

A vicious murderer is targeting gay men in Los Angeles, and it isn't long before Dave Brandstetter finds himself in the killer's path. Dave Brandstetter's afternoon does not begin well: his ex-boyfriend picks him up at the airport, and the ride home-in bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic-is one long argument between them. The insurance investigator's day gets worse when he finds a man-bloody, rain-soaked, and ice cold-lying on his porch, killed by a stab wound while Dave was out of town. There is a serial killer loose in Los Angeles, and this man is his sixth victim. Like the others, he had already been marked for death-by the unforgiving plague known as AIDS. Someone is targeting sick men in the city, and Dave's search for the killer leads him into the dark side of gay Los Angeles, where death comes without warning, and life is a fearful dream.

With retirement just out of reach, Dave Brandstetter investigates the killing of a Vietnamese immigrant. As an insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter has spent his life unraveling suspicious deaths. Now, well into middle age, he has decided to retire for the sake of Cecil, the young TV reporter who loves and cherishes him, and has too often risked his own life for Dave's work. But retirement does not come easily. An old friend in the public defender's office asks Dave to help Andy Flanagan, a shiftless young man accused of murdering a Vietnamese businessman to defend the Old Fleet-a shantytown of houseboats that has been earmarked for development. Unable to resist the case, Dave heads to the Old Fleet and begins asking questions. Beneath the surface of this oil-slicked slum lurks an international conspiracy so appalling that Dave will regret postponing his retirement.

When a paintball player gets hit with a real bullet, Dave Brandstetter catches the case. Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has spent the last few years drifting in and out of retirement. For the sake of his boyfriend, Cecil, he has attempted to forgo dangerous jobs. But when a close friend's death sends Dave into a depressive funk, Cecil recognizes that work is the only cure. During a high-stakes paintball game, a hardcore supremacist gets hit by a very real bullet. Although the police claim the death was accidental-nothing but a stray round from a nearby hunting preserve-Dave knows that a man this hated seldom dies by chance. His investigation takes him into the strange world of make-believe war-a grown-up version of cowboys and Indians whose players sometimes have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. If Dave isn't careful, he'll find himself stained with something more permanent than paint.

For the sake of a frightened child, Dave Brandstetter takes on his very last case. In his decades as an insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter has never shied away from violence, and he's had more than his share of close calls. Time is catching up with him, his body is slowing down, and his wit is not as sharp as it used to be. But he will forgo retirement once more for the sake of a puzzle no detective could resist. Walking on the beach, a friend finds a bedraggled child who claims he has witnessed a murder. The victim is a drug-addicted pop star, and the obvious suspect is the dead man's ex-girlfriend-a junkie whom the child saw standing over the body, gun in hand. In the final installment of Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking series, Dave looks for justice once more, hoping that he will also find a lasting measure of peace.