Books: Fadeout By Joseph Hansen (1970)

“Set around 1969, the tale begins with the disappearance of a California radio personality named Fox Olson. A failed writer, Olson finally found success as a beloved folksinger and wholesome country raconteur with a growing national audience. The community is therefore shocked when Olson’s car is found wrecked, having been driven off a bridge and swept away in a fast-moving arroyo on a rainy night. A life insurance claim is filed by Olson’s widow and the company holding the policy sends their best man to investigate. The problem is that Olson’s body was never found. Not in the car. Not further down the river. As Dave Brandstetter begins his investigation he quickly finds that none of it adds up.”

It’s rare for me to be impressed with novels (in any genre) –I’ve read lot and it’s hard to find something refreshing. Yet, Fadeout is a stellar mystery and is fifty years old. The first of twelve novels featuring Dave Brandstetter, an openly gay insurance investigator who embodies the tough, no-nonsense personality of those classic hardboiled private investigators of long ago (“After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor, The Times –London claimed).

I really liked this book, and to be honest, I’m surprised that back in 1970, this book even got published by a mainstream publishing company, Harper & Row. Mostly because Brandstetter in no victim, he’s “contently homosexual,” as the New Yorker put it. He’s a man who is in a public relationship with another man and is working as a detective for his father’s insurance company. And he has a good relationship with his father, as well, even if his Dad does not approve of his son being gay. He does nothing more than be himself, a regular guy, one who everyone in his orbit assumes he’s straight –and feel comfortable using gay slurs because they all assume he is not one of “them.” It was just refreshing to read something like this and think this was released fifty-two years ago when gay characters were always seen as merely stereotypes –effeminate, damaged; to be killed or be the killer because their psychologically broken because their gay and society has rejected them. By the way, if anyone is curious, there are some subtle scenes of man-on-man action here, but it’s not shocking as it might’ve been in 1970.

While they’re have been other authors who have created gay detectives (Michael Nava’s Henry Rios was one I tried to read years and years ago), it’s shocking to me that Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter has gone by me and the rest of the world for these fifty years. I now must read the rest.