Books: The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning by Joseph Hansen (1990)

“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 friendʹs 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 isnʹt careful, heʹll find himself stained with something more permanent than paint.”

The penultimate tale in the Brandesetter series, is one the better entries in the series. Like the others, what work here are the pacing and the fact each book makes Dave a little bit older, a little bit weary and little bit sad that friends and family are shuttling off this mortal coil. It’s a rarity in most genres, but especially the thriller/mystery series, for the hero to age with the passing years between titles. Also, by book eleven, Hansen has complete control of Dave and the other characters that populate the book, which offers a tightly paced thriller filled with some really bad people. And The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning, with its white supremacists, small-town narrow minded citizens, written nearly 34 years-ago, shows nothing has changed and really could be taking place in 2024. Example: “Whole United States feels the way I do, but they’ve been brainwashed by the liberal network TV traitors to where they’re afraid to speak out plainly.”

As always, there is a bit of weirdness of a plot convenience –that Cecil, a black man, would have been concerned with death of a man who was known to be racist. I’ve talked about Dave’s unwavering empathy, but while Cecil has shown some compassion, I question whether he would have enough feelings about racist dead man to involve his boyfriend in finding out who killed him.

Still, another satisfying book from Hansen, a great thriller with a prescient aspect that should appeal to many.