Books: Troublemaker By Joseph Hansen (1975)

"Rick Wendell wouldn’t hurt a flea. The big, jovial owner of the Hang Ten, a surfing-themed gay bay on the boardwalk, was loved by regulars and new arrivals alike. But Rick was found naked and dead, with a local hustler named Larry Johns standing over him, smoking gun in hand. Wendell’s death is ruled as a homicide and Johns is arrested. Everyone thinks it’s a simple open-and-shut case. Everyone except the death claims investigator, Dave Brandstetter. The trusty insurance investigator doesn’t make the same assumptions about the crime scene and easy story it tells. Larry Johns had enough time to escape had he wanted to. Not to mention Johns lacked any discernible motive, especially since the $200 in Wendell’s wallet was left untouched. In an investigation that takes him from sun-scorched hillside ranches to seedy boardwalk bars, Brandstetter, in his own unique and hardboiled way, barges his way through the sometimes seedy life that exists at the edges of Los Angeles."

More a straight forward whodunit in the Agatha Christie style, but Brandstetter remains the same investigator whom seemly knows murder when others don’t and he’s willing to be a jerk and an ass to get his killer. Still, the mystery isn’t much and the solution rather Christie-like. The $25,000 life insurance policy becomes less and less important, as Dave realizes that the missing $1,500 is the key to everything. But sometimes the story is less important than the characters and atmosphere. Here he excels at creating a bunch of people no one would want to be friends with. The prose is sparse and, always, stylish and author Hansen gives a peek in gay life of the early 1970s –something rare in this genre.

As this is book three, I did notice something. The first book supposedly took place in 1969 (based merely, I admit, on the 1970 publication date), and the second and third only months apart from that first book and each other. However, he has a character sing a John Denver song while in the shower. While “Sunshine on My Shoulders” was released in 1971, it did not become a single hit song until 1973. And this book was released in 1975. I mean, it’s nothing, a stupid nitpick, but a reminder that sometimes adding pop cultural references, while trying to keep a loose continuity, can be hard.